He flickered the hook with his finger. "Exchange," he said, giving his number, "can you tell me who was speaking just now?"
"Box three, G. P. O. public 'phones," said the girl wearily.
"Oh, hell!" said Bryce in disgust, and hung up the receiver.
The rest of the week passed without incident of any sort, and, despite the warning he had received. Bryce went on calmly with his preparations. For all the fat flabbiness of him he was grit through and through, and it took more than a warning over the telephone to turn him aside once he had made up his mind to take a certain course. He went on quietly and silently; his only sign of perturbation was that first thing on Tuesday he slipped down town and bought a big calibre revolver.
Friday morning came, and at ten-thirty exactly, not a minute before or after, Mr. Abel Cumshaw knocked at the front door and was admitted. He was shown at once into Mr. Bryce's study, where that gentleman awaited him, watch in hand.
"On time to the tick," he said affably as Cumshaw entered the room. "Everything's ready for an immediate start. I suppose you've got all you want."
"I'm always ready at a moment's notice," Cumshaw said. "I travel light. I'm an old campaigner."
"That's the way I like to hear a man talk," Bryce said breezily. "We'll be going in my car as far as we can. After that we'll have to walk, and I'm not a very good hand at that. There's some rough spots up there, they tell me," he said off-handedly. For all his seeming nonchalance he was watching Cumshaw intently, and he saw him give an almost imperceptible start. It flashed across Bryce's mind that perhaps Cumshaw was in the pay of the people who had gone to such pains to 'phone him. A second look at the man convinced him that such was not the case. Cumshaw's eyes were frank and clear, and met his unswervingly. They were not the eyes of a man who was playing a double game.
There was something in them that Bryce did not quite understand. It was the animation of newly-resurrected hope, such a light as might have shone in the eyes of the men who rode to find the Holy Grail. Bryce knew nothing of him or his history, and his only thought was that in some queer way the man had a vital interest in the Grampians. It must be remembered that, as far as known facts were concerned, Bryce knew nothing more than the police records had told him. True, his reasoning faculties, which were none of the densest, carried him a little further, but he would have been the very first to admit his fallibility. Nothing had occurred as yet to connect Cumshaw with Mr. Jack Bradby. He recognised that the man had a definite object in view in going to the Grampians—that was plain enough—but it might after all be merely coincidence. Such things have happened. Mr. Cumshaw, on the other hand, was alert and suspicious. He suspected everybody and everything, and he had answered the advertisement solely because he believed, or affected to believe, that an expedition to the hill country could have no other object that the recovery of the gold. Doubtless it will appear strange that Mr. Cumshaw had allowed so many years to elapse without attempting to secure it for himself, but, as he told Bryce later on, there were reasons even for that.