Cumshaw nodded. "It seems funny," he said, "but I've never been able to find it."
"There's nothing funny about it," Bryce told him. "History and fiction abound with instances of similar miscalculations. I'll guarantee that there are scores of such places in every continent in the world. Australia's got just as many as any other place. What made you want to hunt it up again after all those years?"
"Old associations, I suppose," Cumshaw said half-ashamedly. "While I was in New South Wales—I went there, you understand, until things blew over a bit—and my wife was alive, I didn't want anything else but to be near her. When she died and things began to go wrong with me, I drifted back here. Money was short. I was living as best I could, and there were the children to look after, and the sight of the old places brought things back to my mind. I was beginning to dig bits up from the memory of the past—the doctors have some fancy name for lapses like mine, though I could never remember what it was—and then one day I asked myself why shouldn't I go after the gold? It was as much mine as anyone else's, now that Bradby was dead, and the Bank that originally owned it had gone smash about the Land Boom time from what I could gather. I went, but I missed the place somehow. I went time and again, but it was always like that 'Lost Mountain' story of Mayne Reid's, though a valley's harder to find than a mountain you'd think. I couldn't find it anyhow, and that's about all there is to it."
"Um!" said Mr. Bryce, and he ran his hand softly across his chin. "We are up against a bigger thing than I thought. I'm hanged if I can see a glimmer of light anywhere. Is there anything you can suggest?"
Cumshaw did not reply. He was staring straight ahead of him, staring intently, and little furrows of anxiety marred the serenity of his forehead. He was peering into the shadows of the trees as if his eyes were twin searchlights that could cut substance from the gloom. He was staring so intently that Bryce whirled round, fully convinced that his friends of the telephone were upon them.
"What's wrong?" he queried in a hoarse whisper. "What are you looking at?"
"Nothing," said Cumshaw. "I thought I heard something moving, that's all."
Bryce in his turn peered intently in between the tree-boles, but the shadows lay thick upon the grass between, and it was difficult to define even the shapes of the more distant timber. The place was still and gloomy, full of grim forebodings, like a summer sky in which a storm is gathering.
"We must have been mistaken," Bryce remarked in his embracing way. "There doesn't seem to be anyone about."
"Hands up!" snapped a crisp voice, and in the surprise of the moment Bryce obeyed. Cumshaw had no such intention. He dropped suddenly on to the ground even as a shot rang out, and a bullet whistled close above his head. The next instant he was crashing swiftly through the bushes, spinning down into the gully like a human projectile.