A step forward showed him something more. Right under the bank a dark patch showed. It was the mouth of a cave.
He listened intently, but no sound came to him, and he again crept forward until he was able to see into the cave. It was low-roofed, and formed by rocks which had fallen loosely together, and over which vegetable soil had accumulated.
Satisfied it was empty, he advanced boldly towards it. As he pushed between the shrubs which grew close up to it, he caught sight of what, in the shadow, looked like a crouching man. In a moment his carbine was thrown forward and he was about to challenge, when he realised he was aiming at a heap of clothes.
He stepped into the cave. The clothes lay in a carelessly thrown heap, and with them, half hidden, was a false beard of long yellow hair.
Picking it up, he held it at arm's length. So the Rider was disguised after all!
The flimsy thing brought clearly back to him the features of the man as he had twice seen him. The close-clipped fair hair, the light sandy eyebrows, the peculiarly light lashes which gave so sinister an expression to the eyes, were distinct; but when he tried to reconstruct the face as it would be without the beard, he was baffled. The form of the nose, the moulding of the chin, the shape of the mouth, had been hidden by the disguise, and without a knowledge of them Durham could not grasp fully what the man was like. As Harding had expressed himself, when describing the face he had seen at the window of the bank, it was the impression of a familiar face disguised, and yet a familiar face which could not be located.
Beyond that he could not go.
He picked up the clothes and examined them. They were of nondescript grey, such as can be bought by the hundred at any bush store in Australia, and were similar to what the man was wearing the night he visited Waroona Downs. The hat was missing, as Durham expected it would be. The pockets were empty.
Replacing the articles as nearly as possible in the position in which he found them, Durham turned his attention to the cave itself.
The floor was rough and uneven. What sand clustered in the hollows was too much trampled upon to reveal any detail of the feet that had walked upon it.