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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.
"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.
Almost unconsciously he adopts the popular attitude just as he enlarges his vocabulary to include "pidgin English" and such unfamiliar phrases as "tiffin," "bund" and "cumshaw." This chapter is not a brief for the missionary, but simply a matter of fair play.
Wo Cheng stepped to the light and examined it. "No need cumshaw my," he murmured. The Russian bowed gravely, and turned toward the door. It was then that the face of the Chinaman underwent a rapid change. The look of craftiness, treachery, and greed swept over it again. This time the yellow man's hand unmistakably reached for the knife.
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.
Cautious and all as he was, his flight was not absolutely noiseless, and so it came about that presently Bryce heard him, and circled round the spot from which the sound came like a wolf heading off a herd of deer. Cumshaw crashed through the bushes and emerged into the open a hundred yards or so ahead of Bryce.
"And they wouldn't have been wrong in that," the other answered with grim humor. "But let's get to the business of the evening, Abel. I've got a good idea to put the pursuers off the scent, that is, if there's any pursuit." "Out with it, then," said Cumshaw. The elder man reined in his horse, and, leaning over, whispered in his companion's ear.
"It wouldn't be a bad idea," he suggested, "if I looked about for a likely spot to bury that stuff." "Go ahead," said Cumshaw coolly, as if it were the most natural suggestion in the world. Without further parley Bradby walked over to the spot he had marked earlier in the morning. Bending down, he commenced to dig in the soft soil with the point of his sheath-knife.
"Have it your own way," said Bradby. "I'm game enough when I know what I'm tackling. I only mentioned I didn't like the feel of the place, and I don't see that that gives you any call to say what you have." "We'll call it off until we've investigated," Cumshaw replied. "You stay here with the horses, and I'll creep forward a bit and see if anyone's home.
Both of them were children of the warm, sun-kissed lowlands, and the difference of even a few degrees of temperature had a remarkable effect on them. With Abel Cumshaw it was such as to send a warm glow into his cheeks; the cold bite of the air made his blood sparkle like new wine and urged him on to fresh efforts. It affected Mr. Bradby in another and a worse way.
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