Part 21 (1/2)

”You don't even know that,” the other answered, his lips curling in a wry smile.

”I'll know as soon as you tell me,” Bryce hinted.

It is a difficult matter for a man, who all his life has held a close secret, to divulge it at a moment's notice, in a sudden fit of warm friendliness, to a comparative stranger, and so Abel c.u.mshaw found it.

It is even harder to surrender one's hopes and ambitions in favor of a potential rival, honest and all as that rival may appear to be. For one brief moment c.u.mshaw paused on the brink of revelation, the while he weighed the matter in his mind. In some strange way Bryce had guessed that he was after the gold, but did he know why and how? c.u.mshaw rather fancied he didn't. He was so sure of it that he decided that he would gain nothing by divulging the connection between himself and the late Mr. Bradby. So the mouth which was opening to speak shut up again like a steel trap, and the dark eyes turned bleak and cold. He looked Bryce steadily and calmly in the face.

”There is nothing to tell,” he said, and turned on his heel.

Black night had descended on the forest many hours before, so many in fact that the camp fire had sunk to a feeble red glow, and the dying embers were already circled by a ring of dead white ash. The breeze was crooning softly through the branches of the trees, singing weird chanties to itself. In between the murmurs of the wind there came another sound, the indistinct sound of a sleepy man mumbling to himself.

Bryce half-raised himself on one elbow and listened. Half a dozen feet away from him c.u.mshaw lay tightly rolled in his blankets. He tossed restlessly and once all but sat up. Bryce dropped quickly but soundlessly back into a p.r.o.ne position. But the alarm had been a false one, and presently he quietly raised himself again. The indistinct mumbling went on as before, and he strained his ears to catch some intelligible word.

”Kill me, would you?” he heard the other say.

His voice sank again, and for a time he mumbled and mouthed his words so that Bryce missed most of what he said. He was just on the point of settling down again when c.u.mshaw 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 p.r.o.ne 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.

”I must have dreamt I said it,” c.u.mshaw murmured to himself. ”If I'd spoken the way I thought I had he'd have been wide-awake.” And then he in his turn composed himself to slumber.

They were very quiet at breakfast. Bryce was turning the situation over in his mind, viewing it from all possible angles and seeking some method of getting c.u.mshaw to speak without in any way antagonising him. c.u.mshaw himself was troubled by lingering doubts. It was quite possible after all that Bryce had heard him, supposing he had spoken aloud, and was quietly dissembling for some purpose of his own. His very thoughtfulness seemed to lend color to that idea. He looked at Bryce across the carpet of gra.s.s and at the same instant Bryce raised his eyes. They stared at each other with the breathless intensity of two men who know that in all things they are evenly matched. Each was striving to the last atom of his will-power to break down the resistance of the other and force him in some way to take the initiative. At last it was Bryce who dropped his eyes a fraction and c.u.mshaw who breathed a sigh of relief. But his relief was short-lived, for in the last half-second his guard had relaxed. Bryce said:

”Why did Bradby want to kill you, Mr. c.u.mshaw?”

The quick yet calm question, covering as it did the one episode of which n.o.body but the two partic.i.p.ants could possibly have any knowledge, startled c.u.mshaw. For once his impa.s.sive face showed signs of fear, and his eyes became those of a hunted man. He half-rose to his feet and then dropped back again, as if aware of the uselessness of flight. He tried to speak, but the words stuck in his throat. In one short sentence Bryce had shattered all his hopes and pulled his airy castles to the ground.

Did this man but like to speak he would be once again c.u.mshaw the bushranger, the man who had been hand in glove with Bradby, and who, through some miracle of mischance, had not been bracketed with his dead colleague. Bryce knew all apparently, and a word from him----. c.u.mshaw s.h.i.+vered.

”You can trust me,” Bryce said softly. ”I guess I know your secret now.

You and Bradby carried out that robbery between you. You hid the gold, and for one reason and another you've never retrieved it. Isn't that it?”

c.u.mshaw nodded. It was too late now to deny anything, even if he had so felt inclined. Nemesis in the shape of this laughing-eyed, gross-bodied man, had come upon him in his old age, and there was nothing for it but to take what was coming with as good a grace as he could muster.

”What happened thirty years or more ago is over and done with,” Bryce ran on, ”and I'm not the sort to bring it into the light of day again.

I'm after that gold, and, in order to get it, I'm quite ready to repeat my previous offer. We each seem to have something that the other lacks.

You can tell me many things I don't know. Of that I'm sure.”

”There's a lot of things you seem sure of,” c.u.mshaw said with a half-defiant air.

”I'm as sure that you're the man who was with Bradby as if I'd seen it all myself,” Bryce stated. ”Remember, before you refuse, that it's always better to compromise than fight. Furthermore, if you have to fight, it's much better to have an ally you can rely on.”

”What's that?” c.u.mshaw demanded with a show of interest. ”What do you mean?”