The Lost Valley Part 4

"I do, I do," I protested. "Can't you see it?"

"I can't see anything," she said stubbornly, "except that you'd do this rather than listen to me. It shows all you think of me. Oh, I hate you!

I never, never want to see you again!"

"Is that your last word?" I demanded.

"Absolutely my last," she answered firmly.

"Well," I said, "here's my last too. I'm going to carry out my promise, and if a man had spoken to me about it as you have spoken to me to-night I would have pulped his face."

"I really believe you would," she said exasperatingly. "You see, Jim, you were always something of a savage. That, I suppose, is why you are so anxious to go to the Islands ... where the savages are."

That was the very last word she had said to me, for the next moment the gate was banged behind her and shut me out of her life. I was hurt, badly hurt in my self-esteem, but my rising anger, burning hot within me, kept me from feeling as bad as I might have felt. In two months'

time I landed at Tulagi on Florida Island, and for the next four years or so the civilised world knew me not. I reached finality, but I spent my fortune and came back to Australia to all intents and purposes a pauper. Four years...! Here she was facing me at last--just as if nothing had ever come between us.

"Yes, it's me," I said ungrammatically. "Why?"

She raised her hand to her throat with a queer little gesture. "I didn't quite expect to see you ... yet," she said.

"It's the unexpected that happens," I remarked. "I've come back at last, though in slightly different circ.u.mstances."

"I know, Jim. I've heard."

"He told you," I suggested, and nodded towards the door she had just closed.

"How do you know that?" she asked quickly.

"It is my business to know things," I told her. "I'm a professional caretaker of secrets now."

She looked at me blankly and I saw that he had not told her everything.

It behoved me to play the game warily until I was sure of my ground.

"What are you doing here, Moira?" I asked her point-blank.

"That's a question I could ask you," she countered. "But I am here, not from any desire to meet you--I didn't know you were here--but because he sent for me."

"And why should he send for you?" I persisted.

There was just the faintest flicker of a smile moving about her lips now; she had turned a little and the light was playing on her face.

"For just the simplest reason in the world. He wanted me."

"Why should he want you?" I demanded.

She looked at me a moment as if astonished that I should ask such a question. But there was that in my eyes which told her that my ignorance was anything but a.s.sumed.

"You really mean to say you don't know?" she asked incredulously.

"If I did know I wouldn't question you about it," I said shortly. "What is the reason?"

"Well, you see," she answered lightly, with just a slight uplift of her eyebrows--an old theatrical trick that I used to admire in the days gone by--"he happens to be my uncle."

"That puts another complexion on matters," I said half to myself. But her quick ear caught the drift of my remark and she was down on me like the wolf on the fold.

"You're in with him, are you?" she questioned, with that devouring flame I knew so well flaring up in her golden-brown eyes. "You're in with him ... in this?"

In a way I wasn't. As a matter-of-fact I suspected from her last words that she knew more about everything than I did, but I was perfectly sure that she wouldn't believe me if I denied it, so I said instead, "Yes, I am."

"I might have known it," she said with a little shake of her head. I didn't quite follow her logic, but I judged it best to let it pa.s.s. One would think from the way she spoke that there was something reprehensible in being mixed up in anything conducted by her venerable relative. I wondered why.

"Yes, you might have known it," I said, falling in with her own humor.

"I have a habit of doing things I shouldn't."

I knew she understood my veiled allusion, for I saw her bite her lip and again the lambent flame leaped up in her eyes. But it died as suddenly as it had come, and in another instant the old tantalising smile was playing about the corners of her mouth. In the smoky interminable depths of the Solomon Island jungle I had crushed that smile out of my life, for ever I had thought. I had deliberately erased it from my memory, and at night beside the smudge fire, when my eyes closed for an instant and that beautiful imperious face peeped at me from out of the mazes of recollection, I would open my eyes and stared fixedly at the misshapen headhunters who were my sole companions in that wilderness. "These," I would say, "are the kindred of us both. Their women smile as she smiles, and the men respond to it as I used to respond." And with that thought in my head I would fall asleep and not dream.

"Jim," she said with abrupt irrelevance, "you've changed. You usen't to be like that before. You're different somehow ... cynical, I think."

"That's more than likely," I agreed. "I'm learning to hit back. And now if you'll excuse me," I ran on before she had time to answer, "I'll just drop in with this parcel."

Then without more ado I turned on my heel and knocked at Bryce's door.

CHAPTER IV.

THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT.

"I've got those maps you wanted," I remarked as Bryce opened the door, "and I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long."

"You haven't," he said with a smile. "As a matter-of-fact I've been otherwise occupied. I've had a visitor."

"A visitor?" I said guardedly, though what on earth there was to guard against was more than I could have said just then. Some cross-grained streak in my nature made me both cantankerous and suspicious, and while the mood was on me I would have contradicted or queried the word of an archangel.

"Yes," Bryce replied. "The lady you met in the pa.s.sage. I gather that she knows you."

"We knew each other years ago," I said shortly. In a flash the meaning of the conversation I had overheard burst on me. I began to perceive that her presence in the house was due in part at least to me. Well, if he fancied he was going to patch up our old love affair he had undertaken a bigger job than he thought. For two pins I would have told him, had he uttered another word, that there was one matter in which I would brook no man's interference, and that even the ties that bound him to my father were not strong enough to allow him to settle what was n.o.body's affair but mine. But, with even greater tact than I believed he possessed, he switched the conversation on to quite another subject and talked to me for the better part of half-an-hour about the maps I had brought.

He had the formation of the country and its industries at his fingers'

ends, and he spoke like a man who had gained his information at first-hand. I listened attentively, for I guessed in some queer fashion of my own that the maps and that foolish cryptogram, the shooting on the beach and the piece of driftwood were all somehow connected. But either I must have missed some very obvious point or else he picked his words so carefully that he misled me.

I used my eyes for all they were worth, which wasn't much. The typewriter stood on the table in its old position, and the table itself was littered with sheets of typed figures. "More timber measurements," I said to myself. Somehow the sight of those sheets troubled me. They were innocent-looking enough in all conscience, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why they should have this peculiar effect on me. I felt as if a cold gust of wind, the icy breath of Death himself, had pa.s.sed and touched me in the pa.s.sing. I flatter myself that I have pretty strong nerves--the Lord knows they've been tested often enough--but there was something in the atmosphere of that room, something in the sight of those littered sheets of paper, that sent a cold shiver through me, that made me want to rush from the place into the golden sunshine out of doors. It was a presentiment, but one that could not be localised. It did not appear to be one that could be shared either, for Bryce still talked on in his own quaint way, apparently unaffected by the strange influence which so troubled me.

At last he rose and proceeded to gather up the disordered papers on the table. I rose too, and with a careless "So long," was making for the door when he stopped me with a question.

"I suppose," he asked, "that you haven't seen anything lately of our inquisitive friends?"

"The Roman sentry and the gentleman with the hardware and the smashed wrist?" I answered his question with one of mine.