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"You came to tell us about your father, Mr. Abel Cumshaw." "That's right," said the young man with amazing alacrity. "You're all right too. I wasn't sure at first, but now I see you're in the game with me. From what I know of it we're all like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. We all fit in, and none of us is any use without the others.
"It's easy enough to find once you know where it is, but it isn't the kind of place a stranger would blunder on." Cumshaw eyed the hole in the ground, and then looked towards the hut, as if taking his bearings. Bradby noticed him and interposed hastily, "I've got the measurement of the place. Have you a piece of paper I can write it down on?" Cumshaw ran hastily through his pockets.
He failed to understand the natural cheerfulness with which Cumshaw faced the situation. He was bright and volatile enough himself when dealing with the ordinary man his courage was of that average quality that is always at its best when exercised before an admiring or frightened audience but the abnormal brought home to him his own futility of purpose and his natural helplessness.
In this case at least my first impressions were more than justified by the course of events. Mr. Cumshaw stopped to tea and made himself very much at home, and afterwards he told us the story of the gold escort. I have not set out his tale as we heard it that evening.
He was just on the point of settling down again when Cumshaw suddenly sat up. "I'll beat you yet, Bradby!" he cried with startling distinctness. "You're dead now and the gold's mine." His eyes opened and he stared dazedly around him. Bryce was lying prone and snoring away hoggishly. He was fast asleep; there was not the slightest doubt in the mind of the man who watched him so closely.
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.
Neither of them answered. A queer, speculative look crept into Moira's eyes and Cumshaw paled a little beneath his tan. It was the crucial moment of the expedition, and the mere adoption of my suggestion meant that in the next few minutes we would be face to face with either failure or success none of us knew which.
"It amounts to this," he said when Cumshaw had finished. "Bradby buried the gold in this hidden valley of yours. It's so hidden the valley, I mean that you only came on it by accident, and you have no definite idea as to its whereabouts. It's three or four days' journey into the mountains, that's all you can say. There's no way of recognising it from the outside that you know of.
"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.
At the entrance Cumshaw paused. "Nearer fourteen than ten," he said thoughtfully. "Very likely," said Bradby indifferently. "What about that meal? I'm as hungry as a hunter." They were on short commons. Bradby ate heartily, remarking once that there'd be food enough to go round to-morrow. Cumshaw laughed and said he hoped so, but that to-morrow was a day that never came to some people.
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