"I must have dreamt I said it," Cumshaw 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 Cumshaw to speak without in any way antagonising him. Cumshaw 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 grass 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 Cumshaw 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. Cumshaw?"
The quick yet calm question, covering as it did the one episode of which nobody but the two participants could possibly have any knowledge, startled Cumshaw. For once his impassive 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 Cumshaw 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——. Cumshaw shivered.
"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?"
Cumshaw 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," Cumshaw 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."