"Where have you been all this time?" Bryce asked jovially.

Cumshaw stared at him in a puzzled way. His face at first had shown all the symptoms of fear, but the moment Bryce spoke they faded out, to be replaced by a very obvious air of relief. Yet there was nothing of recognition in the man's eyes; they were full of a great blank wonder, like the eyes of a child who takes its first look at the teeming life beyond its doors. His forehead crinkled up as if he were trying to recall something that had slipped his memory.

"Who are you?" he said at length. "I ... I don't think I know you," and he brushed his forehead with a weak, ineffective gesture of the hand. It was then that Bryce noticed the matted, blood-stained condition of his hair and the big purple bruise that disfigured his temple. His quick mind guessed at what had happened, though, erroneously enough, he concluded that Cumshaw had received the blows in an encounter with the men who had been the original cause of the man's flight.

"You'd better come with me, Cumshaw," he said in the same soothing tone that he would have applied to a tired child.

"I'm going home," said Cumshaw with weak stubbornness. "I don't want to go with you."

"I'll take you home," said Bryce.

That he decided was the only thing he could do. Cumshaw was in no fit state to continue the search for his lost valley, and Bryce realised that it would not be safe to leave him uncared for. If he went home with Cumshaw he would be throwing his pursuers off the track. That would help him considerably. He had no fear that they would discover the valley during his absence; their attack on him showed that they had come to the end of their resources, and fancied that their only hope of touching any of the spoils was by forcing the secret out of Bryce. Of course it was quite on the cards that they would follow the car, but it was just as likely that they would make no definite move until they had solved the meaning of his change of plans.

Cumshaw was still standing like a man in a dream. Bryce placed his hand on the man's arm.

"Come along with me," he said. "I'll see that you get safely home."

He bent down quickly and picked up the loam-encrusted object that Cumshaw had dropped in the first moment of the encounter, Cumshaw followed his movements with troubled eyes, but did not interfere in any way. Bryce could see that the thing was a bit of wood, and on one piece of it, where the earth had been scraped off, there were letters scratched. He thrust it into his pocket, meaning to examine it more closely at his leisure.

Cumshaw walked to the car with him. He yielded to the stronger will without any show of resistance. All his own will-power seemed to have departed, and he obeyed Bryce with a child-like faith. Once in the car he slumped into the corner and closed his eyes. Bryce seized the opportunity thus given him to steal another look at the wood he had picked up. He scraped away what loam he could with his finger nail, and soon was able to make out two complete words.

"This'll have to wait," he said with a sigh, as he thrust it back into his pocket. "This bit of wood's got your name on it, Mr. Abel Cumshaw, and I'll bet all I ever owned that it's the key you've been hunting for."

He cranked up the car, and soon was speeding back to the high road. In his corner Mr. Cumshaw slept.

Ten minutes after they reached the main road another car swung out along the Ararat road. There were three men in it, the chauffeur and two passengers. One of the latter held his hand to a wounded shoulder, and swore at the chauffeur every time the car jolted and sent a quiver of pain through the wound.

In course of time Bryce's car came to a little hamlet on the Geelong to Colac road—a hamlet that must be nameless in this story. There he found the Albert Cumshaw of this tale, delivered his father into his care and told him all that had happened, suppressing only the episode of the finding of the wood. He found Albert Cumshaw easier to deal with than he had expected—as a matter of fact the younger man already knew much of his father's story—and the result of the conversation was that the search was held over, pending the elder Cumshaw's recovery.

Bryce remained the night with the Cumshaws, saw that a doctor was secured who would give skilled attention to the elder man, and then early in the morning set out for home. The day was very warm, and the cool breeze that presently sprang up from the ocean moved Bryce to motor down to the coast. At the worst it was only a few miles out of his road. At first he had no intention of making a stop at the heads, but the sea as he came within sight of it looked so cool and inviting that he was tempted to have a dip. He parked his car in the reserve, purchased a bathing suit at the local store and ambled down to the beach. It was only when he commenced to undress that he recollected that the wood was still in his pocket, so with rare caution he thrust it under the sand, quite satisfied that no one would dream of looking there. He had no idea that his pursuers were so close behind him; he was merely taking precautions against any casual tramp who might be tempted to run through his pockets.

Ten minutes later James Carstairs, explorer, gentleman and rolling stone, limped into the picture, and the story of The Lost Valley entered upon its penultimate phase.



PART III

THE FINDING OF THE LOST VALLEY.



CHAPTER I.

THE CYPHER.

"You may smoke if you like, Mr. Cumshaw," Moira said graciously to our visitor.

I said nothing; instead I silently handed the man my cigar-case. He selected a weed with a discriminating care that I felt cast an unwarranted reflection on the quality of the cigars I smoked. I watched him in silence while he cut off the end with a neat, precise stroke of his penknife, lit the cigar and blew a cloud of blue smoke out of his mouth. All the time I was staring at him I could feel Moira's eyes on me, and I knew that she was wondering what made me so boorish and morose. Or, perhaps, with a woman's keen instinct for ferreting out the things she shouldn't know anything about, she guessed just what was the matter. To tell the truth I was just beginning to feel a little jealous. Frankly I considered that she was paying too much attention to Mr. Albert Cumshaw, and I hadn't two sharp eyes without seeing that he openly admired her. Of course I had turned down her overtures of reconciliation, and I think I told her plainly enough that there was no possibility of my falling in love with her again; but, if all that were perfectly true, I shouldn't have been jealous because the two of them took to making eyes at each other. The fact remained that I was a little hurt by what I saw, and I had to recognise, even though I ran counter to the promptings of my common-sense, that I wasn't as indifferent to her as I would have myself believe.

I brought myself back with a jerk to the matter in hand.

"What do you propose doing about the matter?" I asked of Cumshaw.

He did not reply immediately. His right little finger flipped the ash from off the end of his cigar, and then the dark curly head lifted and the glowing eyes looked straight into mine.

"What do I propose doing!" he repeated. "Well, if it was left to me," he said, after a contemplative pause, "I'd say the treasure's there, and the sooner we go after it the better. We know already that there's other people on the job—they killed Mr. Bryce and they made a mess of the Dad—and it's all right thinking, as Mr. Bryce did, that they've come to the end of their tether and are waiting for us to set the pace for them. There's been so many miracles in this play already that it doesn't do to risk the chance of any more. We've got no absolute guarantee that they won't stumble on the key to everything while we're wasting time here. You say you've got a cypher Mr. Bryce left you. Well, that cypher contains the position of the treasure; there's no doubt about that in my mind. Bradby carved it on the wood—neither he nor the Dad had any paper with them at the time—and from what I've heard of the man I'm confident that it's the kind of thing he would do. Then when Mr. Bryce got hold of it he burnt the wood and threw what was on it into a sort of cryptogram. One way and another he was pretty cautious when the fit took him, though I must say that when it was a question of his own life he wasn't so particular. It boils down to this. The Dad's out of the game for good and we've got to use our own wits. Within limits we've got a fair idea of the position of the valley, and, once we've solved the cypher, we'll probably have something more definite to go on."

"That," I remarked, "is supposing we do solve it. As far as I can see it's too weird for anything."

"Uncle," said Moira severely, "wouldn't have written it if he didn't think you could solve it. That's why he made it easy."

"If you think it's easy," I retorted, "take it yourself and see what you can make of it."

"That's a good idea," Cumshaw cut in, turning my own shaft against myself. "Suppose we all have a shot at it and see what we can make of it. We might get it all out and again we mightn't. When we get as far as we can we'll all pool our efforts, and maybe we'll make something out of it that way."

"An excellent suggestion, Mr. Cumshaw," Moira said, and darted a glance of triumph at me. It said as plainly as so many words that here was a champion for her, a man who would defend her against the whole world. Of course I ignored it. What man would do anything else under the circumstances? But there are some things, of which this was one, that the more one ignores them the more insistent as to their presence do they become. So, though I affected not to see Moira's little glance of triumph, it photographed itself upon my mind's eye and completely spoiled the evening for me.

"We'll get Jim here to type out a copy for you before you go, Mr. Cumshaw," she promised, "and you can see what you can make of it."

"Thanks," said the young man briefly. I had expected him to make a bigger mouthful of it than that, and I thought it odd that he did not. It struck me too as queer that he did not ask for a look at the cypher; an ordinary man would have known no peace until he had examined it in all its baffling details. As I was to learn, Mr. Cumshaw was no ordinary man, and, for a young chap of his age, had his emotions and inclinations under rather remarkable control.

I stood up. "If you want that cypher," I said, "I'll type it out now, and you can study it on the way home if you wish."

"It's very kind of you," Cumshaw murmured with a well-bred lack of enthusiasm.

"I think," said Moira, "that we'd all better adjourn to the study. I don't like to think of anyone being in there alone, especially at night. You see," she explained to Cumshaw, "the room hasn't been used since Uncle's death. He was killed in that very room ... in front of my eyes."

"I understand," said Cumshaw softly, and he rose to his feet and held the door open for Moira to pass out. She led the way to the study and unlocked the door. It had been a fad of hers ever since the tragedy to keep the room sealed, and, as I saw no reason for gainsaying her, I had never interfered. She switched on the light and we stood for a moment on the threshold, dazzled by the unaccustomed radiance. Nothing in the place had been touched—we had not disturbed anything during our search for Bryce's papers—and, save for the absence of some of the actors in the scene, it might have been the very night of the tragedy itself.

I broke the spell by walking into the room and proceeding to take the cover off the typewriter. The machine had not been used since its owner had died. Despite the manner in which I had lied to Bryce, I knew a thing or two about typewriters. As a matter of fact I transcribed the greater part of my father's three volumes of Solomon Island Ethnology on just such another machine. I sat down at the table and drew from my pocket the letter and the cypher, both of which I had thrust out of sight when Albert Cumshaw had been announced that afternoon.

"There's the cypher," I said, and I spread the sheet out on the table.

Cumshaw bent over it and read out aloud from beginning to end.

"2@3; 5@3 &9; 3 5433-3/4 5@ 3 @75 L994 1/4;L 5@3 481/28;? 1/27; 1/443 8; & 8;3 —31/41/2743 1/23:3; "335 31/41/25.5@3; "1/4/3 L843/5 ;945@3/4L41/42 1/4;95@34 &8;3 1/45 48?@5 1/4;?&31/2 59 5@3 043:8971/2 9;33/43)53;L8;? " 94 523&:3 "335.L8? 5@3;," he said, stumbling every now and then at the unfamiliar expressions.

"What do you make of it?" I asked.

He looked up at me with just the flicker of a smile about the corners of his mouth. "I can't say just yet," he replied. "All these things take time. You can't solve them in an instant."

"I thought we might," I said, with just the least hint of offensiveness in my tone. I don't know whether or not he noticed it, but if he did he was gentleman enough to ignore it.

"All right," I ran on, "I'll type this out if one of you'll read it to me. Go slowly, as I don't want to have any mistakes. It's bad enough to have to do it once without having to do it again."

"I'll read it," Cumshaw volunteered. I nodded to show my agreement. I then threaded the paper through and said, "I'm ready."

He began to read it very slowly and carefully, and I typed away as he spoke. I had just got the first four or five combinations down when Moira interrupted me.

"I knew you'd make a mess of it," she said coldly. "I told you so at the beginning." As a matter of fact she had said no such thing, but I let it pass.

"What's wrong?" I queried, looking up at her.

"I've been watching you," said she, "and you haven't depressed your figure lever once. You must have it all wrong. It'll just be simple letters instead of the signs."

I had been typing all the time with my eyes on the keyboard, and I hadn't once glanced at the finished work. Now I looked at it I saw that she was right. I had been typing letters all along when I should have been printing figures. And then something queer about the letters struck me. My heart gave a jump.

"Go on," I said huskily to Cumshaw. "Give me a few more."

He read out two or three more combinations and then I leaned back in the chair. "Look," I said triumphantly, "look what I've done!"

Two heads bobbed down over my work, stared at it for a moment, and then two pairs of eyes smiled at me.

"You've solved it by accident," said Cumshaw.

"I'm sorry for what I said," Moira said simply.

"It's just the simplest cypher in existence," I said. "You've got a keyboard with letters and figures on it. When you want letters you type straight out, and when you want figures you just depress the lever. Now look at this. That 5 is on the same key as T, @ is on H's key, 3 means E, and so on. When Bryce worked it out he simply pressed down the figure lever and left it down, and now to reverse the process all we've got to do is to hit the keys these signs are on and leave the lever alone. Simple, isn't it?"

"Very," said Cumshaw.

"Get it all out, Jim, quick!" said Moira with feminine impatience.

I did. I pressed 2 and I got W, and so on all along the keyboard, and when I had finished I pulled the sheet out and handed it to them. "Read it out, Moira," I said. "It's your turn."

"'When the Lone Tree, the hut door and the rising sun are in line measure seven feet east. Then face direct north, draw another line at right angles to previous one, extending for twelve feet. Dig then.'"

"If it hadn't been for you," said Cumshaw, "we wouldn't have found it. I congratulate you," and he held out his hand to me.

"Rubbish!" I said. "It was all a lucky accident." But all the same I took the proffered hand.

"We can go right on with it now," Moira cried joyously. "There's nothing to stop us."

"Only that we've got to find the valley yet," said Cumshaw gloomily. "My father made several attempts but couldn't locate it."

"You've got to bear in mind," I told them, "that we've got some information your father hadn't, strange though it seems."

"And that?" Cumshaw queried quickly.

"We're looking for a valley that's got a lone tree overlooking it. Your father didn't seem to be aware of that."

Cumshaw seized the paper and read it through quickly. "By the Lord Harry, you're right, Carstairs! That's one piece of information he didn't have. If he had known that when he went after the gold himself he'd have got it."

"Maybe he would," I said doubtfully.

"You don't seem too sure of it, Carstairs," Cumshaw remarked, with a sidelong glance at Moira.

"No more I am," I told him. "I don't like our chances either."

"But," he protested with a puzzled indrawing of his eyebrows, "as far as we're concerned it's as easy as falling off a log."

"Just as easy," I agreed, "providing our friends the enemy don't interfere. They don't seem to be the kind of men who rest on their oars, that is if we can judge anything from their past exploits."

"You're right there, Carstairs," Cumshaw said. "I never gave them a thought, but I see now that they're likely to prove a pretty active menace to our safety."

"That," I said, turning to Moira, "cuts out all possibility of your coming with us. You can't be running into danger."

"Can't I just," she said with an assertive toss of her head, "and, whether I can or not, I'm going," she finished.

I looked at Cumshaw. I could not tell from his expression whether he was pleased or sorry. His face was as devoid of emotion as that of a china doll.

"What do you think about it?" I asked him straight out.

He glanced at me in his turn with a curious baffling light in his dark eyes, and I felt as if he had stripped my soul bare of all pretences and was reading my thoughts in all their nakedness.

"I should think," he said at length with an air of absolute impartiality, "that Miss Drummond is the mistress of her own actions and neither you nor I have any right to dictate what she is to do."

"Have it your own way then," I said, with difficulty suppressing my rising anger. "But if anything goes wrong remember that I warned you beforehand."

"I'll remember that," Moira said, and she favored Cumshaw with a little smile of gratitude. She never smiled at me like that, not even in those far-away days when we were all the world to each other or thought we were. Which in the end amounts to much the same thing.

"Well, if you don't mind," said Cumshaw, breaking an awkward silence, "I'll go home now and think matters over. And then to-morrow we'll decide what to do."

"Home?" I echoed. "I thought——" And then I stopped.

"I'm staying in town," he said with a smile. "That's what I meant when I said home."

"In that case," I said, "you'll be handy whenever we want you. You'd better leave your address in case we want you in a hurry."

He scribbled his address—a leading city hotel—on a blank card and handed it to me. I glanced at it and then thrust it into my pocket. When I looked up again he was holding Moira's hand in his, just a trifle longer than convention demanded I thought, and saying something to her that I did not catch. She smiled in return, a dazzling smile, and said quite distinctly, "Please call whenever you feel inclined. There is no need for us to stand on ceremony with each other now we're partners."

I saw him to the door. At the threshold he turned and spoke with one foot on the step and the other on the ground, taking up that attitude of unaffected ease that gives an air of friendliness to even the most formal conversation.

"I'm rather pleased I met you, Carstairs," he said. "In one way and another I've heard a lot about you, and I think you've got the kind of level head we'll need before we've seen this business through."

"Thank you," I replied. I was nearly going to say 'Soft words butter no parsnips,' but my common-sense came to my aid just in time to prevent me making a fool of myself. He held out his hand, and I took it in the spirit in which he had offered it to me. Nevertheless I was absurdly jealous of the man, though Heaven knows I hadn't the least reason to be. I could see with half an eye that he had made a good impression on Moira, and the way she had spoken to him, especially that last remark of hers, showed me that she was egging him on. It didn't matter one single solitary damn to me. I had told her clearly and definitely that we were business partners and that love was altogether out of the question. Yet here was I, the moment a potential rival appeared on the scene, behaving for all the world like a spoilt child. And, like a spoilt child, for my own good I needed someone to bring me sharply and suddenly to my bearings.

Cumshaw bade me a cheerful good-night. I saw his lithe figure swing along through the sub-tropical darkness of a moonless summer night. Then the latch on the gate clicked with the ringing sound of metal striking against metal. I closed the door and went inside.

Moira was standing in the study just as I had left her, standing as motionless and devoid of life as a statue of carven stone. I don't think she heard me at first.

"Well," I said conversationally, "how is it now?"

She turned at the sound of my voice and faced me squarely. I could see that her eyes were bright with unshed tears, and something inside of me moved me with a sudden impulse to go up to her. I placed my hands on her shoulders and was amazed to find how unsteady they were. They trembled, my hands trembled! And yet they used to tell me in the old Island days that I hadn't a nerve in my body.

I was quite prepared for anything except what really happened. I could feel a sort of tension in the atmosphere, and I expected her to do something theatrical. But she didn't. She backed away from me, but she didn't go far. The table was behind her.

I don't know how long we stood looking at each other. It seemed a lifetime to me, and the silence was the sort that a man feels it sacrilege to break.

"You make it very hard for me, Jim," Moira said calmly. The tears were still in her eyes, but her voice was under excellent control. It didn't vibrate a note. She looked at me as she spoke, looked me straight in the eyes, and I think it was then that I began to realise what an ass I had been making of myself.

"How do I make it hard?" I asked. My voice was curiously low, almost husky in fact. I rather think she noticed it and took heart therefrom. A man is very easy to handle when he is not quite sure of himself.

"I've got to pretend," she said in answer to my question. "Pretend that you are nothing to me when——"

She stopped short. It seemed almost as if she regretted that she had said so much.

"Go on," I urged.

"There's not much to say," she continued. "I just want to tell you, to tell you in such a way that you'll believe me, that if I've treated you shamefully I've suffered for it. I can't make any reparation for it; you were quite right in saying that it is too late now to alter things. I just want you to know that I'm sorry. I can't say much more than that, though I don't want to take any credit for it now, seeing that it's been practically forced out of me."

I remembered the way she had been standing when I came in, the tears in her eyes, and the way she had backed out of my reach the moment I put my hands on her shoulders. It would have been so easy for her to have done the other thing, but she hadn't, and I admired her all the more for it. She might easily have captured me in the first flush of emotion, but she had instead given me time to think and a chance to get away if I wanted to. There was something in her attitude that appealed to my sense of fair play and at the same time prevented me from in any way misinterpreting her last remark.

"Moira," I said, "were you crying when I came in just now?"

Her lip trembled a little as she asked, "Why do you want to know?"

"Because," I said slowly, "I've solved one riddle already to-night, and I've a mind to solve another before I go to bed."

"I was crying," she admitted, "only I didn't mean you to see."

"And why was that?"

"I thought you might imagine I was just doing it."

I knew what she meant; there was no need for her to explain further. She didn't want to influence me in any way; whatever I did must be done of my own free will.

"I'm beginning to understand," I said slowly.

"Then you'll forgive?" she said quickly, and one hand went up to her throat as if she were choking.

I nodded and impulsively she held out her hand to me. I did not take it, and she half-turned so that I would not see what was in her eyes.

"Can't we even be friends?" she said, with a queer little catch in her words.

Something snapped in my head at that, and the words I had been holding back all the evening came to my lips in a rush of speech.

"I didn't mean you to take it that way," I said desperately. "I wouldn't shake hands because ... that's not what I want. It's too stand-offish. I'm going to do more than forgive, and we're going to me more than friends, if you still want me."

"You know I want you," she said softly with her head bowed shyly and the blushes rising in her cheeks.

I took her in my arms and kissed her.



CHAPTER II.

OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY.

Once we had definitely fixed the date of our departure we lost no time in making ready. As the days went by I began to see more and more clearly that it was just as well I had thrown in my lot with Moira and young Cumshaw. Neither of them had the least idea of organisation, and they seemed to think that things just happened of their own accord. Moira couldn't see anything else but the glamor and romance of the adventure, and I found that, for all his cleverness, Albert Cumshaw did not know what was essential to the expedition and what wasn't.

"We can't start off like a picnic party," I said to them on one occasion, "and just wander on until we come to a likely spot. We've got to have everything planned out right down to the last box of matches and the last cartridge."

Cumshaw drew a deep breath. "Cartridges!" he said, "Are you talking figuratively?"

"No," I answered. "I'm speaking literally. It might yet be the case of the last cartridge. You must remember that, even if we get the gold and come back here in safety, we're still not out of the wood. We're not safe until our friends the enemy are removed from our paths for ever."

"You mean that they must be killed?" Moira demanded.

"I don't mean anything of the kind," I answered. "As a matter of fact I've got a perfect horror of killing people. It makes such a mess, and I'm naturally a rather tidy person."

Cumshaw laughed softly, but Moira bit her lip, though she made no reply to what I had said.

"Now, while we're talking about it," I ran on, "I just want to impress on you the fact that we aren't going off into the bush—not the kind of bush that you read about in books, where it's all scrub and myall blacks and things like that. Most of the time we'll be within coo-ee of civilisation. Most of Western Victoria's pretty well settled, and it's just the luck of the game and the formation of the country that this valley's remained so long hidden away. We'll be near enough to people all the time to be noticeable if we do anything remarkable. We've got to go to work so that we'll attract as little attention as possible. We'll want food, enough for several weeks, I suppose, and we've got to get it and take it with us, and do it all in such a way that nobody's going to wonder what we're after. Another thing that that reminds me of. Miss Drummond here had better keep out of sight as long as she can. We two can manage to escape observation, but people always want to know what a woman's doing in it when there's anything suspicious happening."

"If you mean by that that you think I can be turned back at the last moment, you're making a mistake," Moira informed me.

"I don't mean that," I said calmly, "but I want to take every precaution that I can. I'm in charge of this expedition, elected by three votes to nothing, and I'm going to run things the way I think best. It mightn't be the best way in the end, but that's quite another matter. I haven't wandered across the world from Yokohama to the White Nile and from the Klondyke to the Solomons without knowing how to organise an expedition."

"You're right there," Cumshaw acknowledged. "You're the only one amongst us who's had practical experience. In future what you say goes."

"That's the spirit," I said briskly. "What have you to say, Moira?"

"You know best," she answered. "As long as you don't leave me out altogether I'll agree to anything, but I want to take my share of the risk too."

"Apparently," I remarked, "everyone's afraid that everybody else'll have the lion's share of the fighting. Well, if I can fix it, there'll not be any fighting at all."

"What do you mean?" Cumshaw asked interestedly.

"That's nothing to do with the situation at present," I informed him. "You'll all see when the time's ripe. Now what's next?"

"There's nothing more that I know of," Cumshaw volunteered.

"And you, Moira?"

"I think I've got everything fixed," she answered.

"That means we can start at the end of the week," I said with satisfaction. "It looks as if fortune's turning our way at last."

The three of us laughed together, and Cumshaw I think it was who said, "Success to the expedition!" It sounded very nice, and we were all so sure that things were going to turn out well. But there was one little point that all of us had overlooked, and that was destined in one way and another to upset our plans to a remarkable extent.

Profiting by Bryce's experience, I decided to leave the car at home, as I realised that we would have to abandon it sooner or later, and nothing is so apt to set foolish people talking as an apparently ownerless car. I resolved on making our headquarters at the spot where by all accounts the unlamented Mr. Bradby had met his death. For one thing all the later developments of the chase had centred round that one spot, and Bryce himself had gone there unhesitatingly by the shortest and most direct route he knew of. I couldn't see at the time where I could find a better jumping-off place. To say the least it was a fixed point from which to start exploring, and we had the comforting knowledge, though it might not be of any practical use to us, that the valley itself was within two or three days' march. With it as the centre we would have to cast a circle with a radius of anything up to fifty miles, and then somewhere within the enclosed area we might, or might not, find the elusive vale that held the treasure.

We approached the rendezvous by widely divergent routes. It was a rather extravagant precaution, no doubt, but then I wasn't taking any risks that I could possibly avoid. The murderous gentlemen who were quite certainly on our track were a power to be reckoned with, and at the same time we had to keep our eyes open for the law itself. It was all right for Bryce to say that he was playing within the law—quite possibly he was—but I had no idea of paying any percentage to the Crown. I was rather hazy on the matter myself, though I seemed to have heard somewhere or other that the Government always gobbled a big share of the loot in the case of treasure trove. At any rate the quieter we kept the expedition the less likelihood there was of us having to pay anything at all.

Moira was to travel with me from Murtoa, and Cumshaw decided to train as far as Landsborough—the recently opened Crowlands to Navarre railway would take him that far—and then do the rest across the hills on foot. His was the longer and more difficult route, and I had intended at first to take it myself, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with this tale; but he was so insistent, and at one stage threatened so much unpleasantness, that I gave into him, if only for the sake of peace. Before we started I had another talk with Moira and endeavored to dissuade her from accompanying us, but she very calmly told me that she had additional reasons now for going with us. There was sure to be trouble, she admitted that much; but then wasn't her place by my side, more especially if things weren't all they should be? Her logic left much to be desired, but it had the one merit of achieving its object. It was devastating; it completely crushed all my arguments and left me without a leg to stand on.

The late March of the year 1919 saw the three of us at the rendezvous, which we had reached without incident of any sort. Contrary to our expectations the other party had not been sighted, and the outlook was certainly auspicious. For all that I felt worried. Everything was going along too swimmingly, and I had a queer feeling that we would meet with trouble very shortly, if only to even things up. Ease and success can only be won after much expenditure of blood and tears; there is not a thing in life worth trying for that can be bought with a minimum of effort. The greater the prize, the greater the price one must pay; always one pays, with health, with limbs, sometimes with life itself.

During the time Moira and I had been travelling together I had slept of a night with one eye more or less open, and the strain of being constantly on the alert was just beginning to tell on me. As a consequence I was very pleased when Cumshaw suggested that we should take watch and watch about. I agreed, with the reservation that I must always be on guard for the dawn-watch. I didn't explain why I was so anxious to take that particular watch, and, though I noticed Moira looking curiously at me, she made no remark. I knew from experience that men are at their sleepiest about four o'clock in the morning, and an attack can be successfully launched then that would fail at any other hour of the day or night. I had yet to test Cumshaw on active service, so I claimed the four o'clock stretch for my own. It doesn't hurt to be careful; I've never yet met anyone who was sorry he had taken precautions.

We camped within a hundred yards of the creek, and after supper Cumshaw and I sprawled on the grass and talked. Moira had retired to an improvised tent we had fashioned for her, and, as it was just out of earshot, we were free to speak our thoughts. I had not seen Cumshaw for the better part of two weeks—he had started from his own place and come right on from there without calling on me again—and I hoped that he might have some further news for me. I asked him casually how his father was getting on.

"Right enough," he said, blowing a cloud of smoke out of his mouth. "Some days you wouldn't think there was a thing wrong with him. He'll talk pretty lucidly at times, but it isn't anything that can be of any use to us. He doesn't seem to have taken much notice of the position of the valley, he apparently thought at the time that it would be very simple to pick it up again, and I fancy that Bradby must have confirmed him in that view. He couldn't have taken into account the way they had twisted about in the mountains. It's the simplest thing in the world to lose yourself here, the more so if you're confident you know your way."

"You've about struck it there," I said. "I just want to give you a little piece of advice, and I hope you won't take it amiss. I don't want to talk about this expedition any more than I can help for two reasons. One's this: I don't wish to cause Miss Drummond any more uneasiness than is absolutely necessary. You know as well as I do that there's a big chance of the lot of us being wiped out just about the time we get within sight of the end. I wouldn't be surprised if they let us walk into a trap and finished us at their leisure. As for the other reason—well, it's never safe to say that you're alone anywhere. If we raise our voices above whispers here we might be giving away valuable information. So just let us keep watch on our tongues. More hopes have been ruined and more chances of success spoilt by gabbling tongues than by any other dozen causes all rolled together."

"I can quite understand that," Cumshaw said, between puffs at his pipe. It was one of those neat little affairs with a round bowl, a spick-and-span pipe that had burnt an even color and that shone as brightly as the day he bought it. My pipe was a sorrier article; it was battered and blackened, and one side of the bowl was down beneath the level of the other, showing that it had been lighted oftener with a blazing brand than with the orthodox matches. In a way it was like its owner; it had been tested by fire and had survived the test. If I were philosophical—but then I wasn't, and that's about all there is to it.

"I didn't go to Landsborough," Cumshaw said after a pause. "I missed my train at Ararat, and so I came on to Great Western. It's much the shorter way. I wish you had known of it before."

"I'm all the better pleased you came that way," I told him. "It will help to disorganise the chase."

He bent over, picked up a live coal in his bare fingers and applied it to his pipe before replying.

"I rather think," he said slowly, "that it will have just the opposite effect."

"You can't have any nerves in those fingertips of yours," I said. "Why will it?"

"I don't seem to have any, do I? I think I saw one of the men at Great Western."

"You don't know them," I said. "How could you?"

"Mr. Bryce described them in his letter," Cumshaw answered. "This man fitted the description of one of them, a dark sort of chap."

"Spanish type?" I queried.

Cumshaw nodded. "I wonder why it is," he ran on, "that we're always more suspicious of that sort of man than, say, a fair type?"

"Relic of the Armada, I suppose," I suggested. "Tell me all about the man you saw."

"I was coming along the roadside," Cumshaw began, "past one of the vineyards, when I noticed a man working close at hand. I was just going to pass by when it struck me that he was the only person about. I thought that rather queer and I gave him a second look. Then I saw that he wasn't digging, as I had thought at first, but that he was scratching aimlessly at the ground. One of those queer feelings that seem altogether unrelated to fact crept over me. Call it second sight or any other fancy name you please, the fact remains that I suddenly knew—not thought, mind you; I knew—that he did not want me to notice him and that he was pretending to be one of the workmen, just so that I would pass him by without more than a cursory glance. When I came to think it over afterwards, I remembered that it struck me when first I saw him that he was the only man I had seen in the vineyards for miles. Of course I had that idea in my mind when I looked at him the second time. That doesn't explain how I understood that I was the very man he did not want to see. He had his head bent down naturally, his hat well drawn over his face, and he went on scratching and scraping as if his very life depended on the energy with which he worked. I didn't get more than a passing glimpse of him, and that wasn't too good—you can't go over to a man and pull off his hat just because he looks suspicious—but I'd swear on a stack of Bibles that he's one of the men we'll have to deal with."

"Perhaps so," I said. "At any rate I'm not going to allow chance workers in the fields to rob me of my night's rest."

"No more am I," assented Cumshaw. "So you don't think there's any likelihood——."

"I don't think anything at all," I cut in. "I take proper precautions, that's all."

He made no comment on my unceremonious interruption, but the strange half-smile he gave me showed that he realised in part at least how his story had affected me. As a matter of fact I was more perturbed than I cared to admit. I had been thinking things over all day, and it had just occurred to me that, seeing we had heard nothing of them since Bryce's death, it was quite possible that they were even now following up the false clue that he had laid for them, and which one of them had got away with the night of the burglary. If that were so, why had they come back and killed Bryce? It was a curious enough situation, and the more I thought about it the more I became convinced that I was right. Our immunity so far was due solely to the fact that the others were well occupied with the faked plan they had stolen on that memorable evening. Now on top of that Albert Cumshaw must come with this circumstantial story of his and upset all my deductions. The strange part of it was, though my reason told me that he had been a victim of his own brilliant imagination, part of my mind—that part that believed in second sight and banshees and were-wolves, and stuff of that sort—told me that he was not so very much wrong after all.

"I'll get to sleep," he said, interrupting the train of my thoughts. "I'll be fresh when my turn comes for guard."

"Tell me," I said, for the matter had been puzzling me all night, "where did you learn to light your pipe with red-hot coals?"

"Oh, that," he said with a laugh. "I saw you doing it earlier in the evening, and I made up my mind that what you did I could do."

"Then it must have burnt you."

"Horribly," he said with a grimace. "Good-night."



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.