Once we had definitely fixed the date of our departure we lost no time in making ready. As the days went by I began to see more and more clearly that it was just as well I had thrown in my lot with Moira and young Cumshaw. Neither of them had the least idea of organisation, and they seemed to think that things just happened of their own accord. Moira couldn't see anything else but the glamor and romance of the adventure, and I found that, for all his cleverness, Albert Cumshaw did not know what was essential to the expedition and what wasn't.

"We can't start off like a picnic party," I said to them on one occasion, "and just wander on until we come to a likely spot. We've got to have everything planned out right down to the last box of matches and the last cartridge."

Cumshaw drew a deep breath. "Cartridges!" he said, "Are you talking figuratively?"

"No," I answered. "I'm speaking literally. It might yet be the case of the last cartridge. You must remember that, even if we get the gold and come back here in safety, we're still not out of the wood. We're not safe until our friends the enemy are removed from our paths for ever."

"You mean that they must be killed?" Moira demanded.

"I don't mean anything of the kind," I answered. "As a matter of fact I've got a perfect horror of killing people. It makes such a mess, and I'm naturally a rather tidy person."

Cumshaw laughed softly, but Moira bit her lip, though she made no reply to what I had said.

"Now, while we're talking about it," I ran on, "I just want to impress on you the fact that we aren't going off into the bush—not the kind of bush that you read about in books, where it's all scrub and myall blacks and things like that. Most of the time we'll be within coo-ee of civilisation. Most of Western Victoria's pretty well settled, and it's just the luck of the game and the formation of the country that this valley's remained so long hidden away. We'll be near enough to people all the time to be noticeable if we do anything remarkable. We've got to go to work so that we'll attract as little attention as possible. We'll want food, enough for several weeks, I suppose, and we've got to get it and take it with us, and do it all in such a way that nobody's going to wonder what we're after. Another thing that that reminds me of. Miss Drummond here had better keep out of sight as long as she can. We two can manage to escape observation, but people always want to know what a woman's doing in it when there's anything suspicious happening."

"If you mean by that that you think I can be turned back at the last moment, you're making a mistake," Moira informed me.

"I don't mean that," I said calmly, "but I want to take every precaution that I can. I'm in charge of this expedition, elected by three votes to nothing, and I'm going to run things the way I think best. It mightn't be the best way in the end, but that's quite another matter. I haven't wandered across the world from Yokohama to the White Nile and from the Klondyke to the Solomons without knowing how to organise an expedition."

"You're right there," Cumshaw acknowledged. "You're the only one amongst us who's had practical experience. In future what you say goes."

"That's the spirit," I said briskly. "What have you to say, Moira?"

"You know best," she answered. "As long as you don't leave me out altogether I'll agree to anything, but I want to take my share of the risk too."

"Apparently," I remarked, "everyone's afraid that everybody else'll have the lion's share of the fighting. Well, if I can fix it, there'll not be any fighting at all."

"What do you mean?" Cumshaw asked interestedly.

"That's nothing to do with the situation at present," I informed him. "You'll all see when the time's ripe. Now what's next?"

"There's nothing more that I know of," Cumshaw volunteered.

"And you, Moira?"

"I think I've got everything fixed," she answered.

"That means we can start at the end of the week," I said with satisfaction. "It looks as if fortune's turning our way at last."

The three of us laughed together, and Cumshaw I think it was who said, "Success to the expedition!" It sounded very nice, and we were all so sure that things were going to turn out well. But there was one little point that all of us had overlooked, and that was destined in one way and another to upset our plans to a remarkable extent.

Profiting by Bryce's experience, I decided to leave the car at home, as I realised that we would have to abandon it sooner or later, and nothing is so apt to set foolish people talking as an apparently ownerless car. I resolved on making our headquarters at the spot where by all accounts the unlamented Mr. Bradby had met his death. For one thing all the later developments of the chase had centred round that one spot, and Bryce himself had gone there unhesitatingly by the shortest and most direct route he knew of. I couldn't see at the time where I could find a better jumping-off place. To say the least it was a fixed point from which to start exploring, and we had the comforting knowledge, though it might not be of any practical use to us, that the valley itself was within two or three days' march. With it as the centre we would have to cast a circle with a radius of anything up to fifty miles, and then somewhere within the enclosed area we might, or might not, find the elusive vale that held the treasure.

We approached the rendezvous by widely divergent routes. It was a rather extravagant precaution, no doubt, but then I wasn't taking any risks that I could possibly avoid. The murderous gentlemen who were quite certainly on our track were a power to be reckoned with, and at the same time we had to keep our eyes open for the law itself. It was all right for Bryce to say that he was playing within the law—quite possibly he was—but I had no idea of paying any percentage to the Crown. I was rather hazy on the matter myself, though I seemed to have heard somewhere or other that the Government always gobbled a big share of the loot in the case of treasure trove. At any rate the quieter we kept the expedition the less likelihood there was of us having to pay anything at all.

Moira was to travel with me from Murtoa, and Cumshaw decided to train as far as Landsborough—the recently opened Crowlands to Navarre railway would take him that far—and then do the rest across the hills on foot. His was the longer and more difficult route, and I had intended at first to take it myself, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with this tale; but he was so insistent, and at one stage threatened so much unpleasantness, that I gave into him, if only for the sake of peace. Before we started I had another talk with Moira and endeavored to dissuade her from accompanying us, but she very calmly told me that she had additional reasons now for going with us. There was sure to be trouble, she admitted that much; but then wasn't her place by my side, more especially if things weren't all they should be? Her logic left much to be desired, but it had the one merit of achieving its object. It was devastating; it completely crushed all my arguments and left me without a leg to stand on.

The late March of the year 1919 saw the three of us at the rendezvous, which we had reached without incident of any sort. Contrary to our expectations the other party had not been sighted, and the outlook was certainly auspicious. For all that I felt worried. Everything was going along too swimmingly, and I had a queer feeling that we would meet with trouble very shortly, if only to even things up. Ease and success can only be won after much expenditure of blood and tears; there is not a thing in life worth trying for that can be bought with a minimum of effort. The greater the prize, the greater the price one must pay; always one pays, with health, with limbs, sometimes with life itself.

During the time Moira and I had been travelling together I had slept of a night with one eye more or less open, and the strain of being constantly on the alert was just beginning to tell on me. As a consequence I was very pleased when Cumshaw suggested that we should take watch and watch about. I agreed, with the reservation that I must always be on guard for the dawn-watch. I didn't explain why I was so anxious to take that particular watch, and, though I noticed Moira looking curiously at me, she made no remark. I knew from experience that men are at their sleepiest about four o'clock in the morning, and an attack can be successfully launched then that would fail at any other hour of the day or night. I had yet to test Cumshaw on active service, so I claimed the four o'clock stretch for my own. It doesn't hurt to be careful; I've never yet met anyone who was sorry he had taken precautions.

We camped within a hundred yards of the creek, and after supper Cumshaw and I sprawled on the grass and talked. Moira had retired to an improvised tent we had fashioned for her, and, as it was just out of earshot, we were free to speak our thoughts. I had not seen Cumshaw for the better part of two weeks—he had started from his own place and come right on from there without calling on me again—and I hoped that he might have some further news for me. I asked him casually how his father was getting on.

"Right enough," he said, blowing a cloud of smoke out of his mouth. "Some days you wouldn't think there was a thing wrong with him. He'll talk pretty lucidly at times, but it isn't anything that can be of any use to us. He doesn't seem to have taken much notice of the position of the valley, he apparently thought at the time that it would be very simple to pick it up again, and I fancy that Bradby must have confirmed him in that view. He couldn't have taken into account the way they had twisted about in the mountains. It's the simplest thing in the world to lose yourself here, the more so if you're confident you know your way."

"You've about struck it there," I said. "I just want to give you a little piece of advice, and I hope you won't take it amiss. I don't want to talk about this expedition any more than I can help for two reasons. One's this: I don't wish to cause Miss Drummond any more uneasiness than is absolutely necessary. You know as well as I do that there's a big chance of the lot of us being wiped out just about the time we get within sight of the end. I wouldn't be surprised if they let us walk into a trap and finished us at their leisure. As for the other reason—well, it's never safe to say that you're alone anywhere. If we raise our voices above whispers here we might be giving away valuable information. So just let us keep watch on our tongues. More hopes have been ruined and more chances of success spoilt by gabbling tongues than by any other dozen causes all rolled together."

"I can quite understand that," Cumshaw said, between puffs at his pipe. It was one of those neat little affairs with a round bowl, a spick-and-span pipe that had burnt an even color and that shone as brightly as the day he bought it. My pipe was a sorrier article; it was battered and blackened, and one side of the bowl was down beneath the level of the other, showing that it had been lighted oftener with a blazing brand than with the orthodox matches. In a way it was like its owner; it had been tested by fire and had survived the test. If I were philosophical—but then I wasn't, and that's about all there is to it.

"I didn't go to Landsborough," Cumshaw said after a pause. "I missed my train at Ararat, and so I came on to Great Western. It's much the shorter way. I wish you had known of it before."

"I'm all the better pleased you came that way," I told him. "It will help to disorganise the chase."

He bent over, picked up a live coal in his bare fingers and applied it to his pipe before replying.

"I rather think," he said slowly, "that it will have just the opposite effect."

"You can't have any nerves in those fingertips of yours," I said. "Why will it?"

"I don't seem to have any, do I? I think I saw one of the men at Great Western."

"You don't know them," I said. "How could you?"

"Mr. Bryce described them in his letter," Cumshaw answered. "This man fitted the description of one of them, a dark sort of chap."

"Spanish type?" I queried.

Cumshaw nodded. "I wonder why it is," he ran on, "that we're always more suspicious of that sort of man than, say, a fair type?"

"Relic of the Armada, I suppose," I suggested. "Tell me all about the man you saw."

"I was coming along the roadside," Cumshaw began, "past one of the vineyards, when I noticed a man working close at hand. I was just going to pass by when it struck me that he was the only person about. I thought that rather queer and I gave him a second look. Then I saw that he wasn't digging, as I had thought at first, but that he was scratching aimlessly at the ground. One of those queer feelings that seem altogether unrelated to fact crept over me. Call it second sight or any other fancy name you please, the fact remains that I suddenly knew—not thought, mind you; I knew—that he did not want me to notice him and that he was pretending to be one of the workmen, just so that I would pass him by without more than a cursory glance. When I came to think it over afterwards, I remembered that it struck me when first I saw him that he was the only man I had seen in the vineyards for miles. Of course I had that idea in my mind when I looked at him the second time. That doesn't explain how I understood that I was the very man he did not want to see. He had his head bent down naturally, his hat well drawn over his face, and he went on scratching and scraping as if his very life depended on the energy with which he worked. I didn't get more than a passing glimpse of him, and that wasn't too good—you can't go over to a man and pull off his hat just because he looks suspicious—but I'd swear on a stack of Bibles that he's one of the men we'll have to deal with."

"Perhaps so," I said. "At any rate I'm not going to allow chance workers in the fields to rob me of my night's rest."

"No more am I," assented Cumshaw. "So you don't think there's any likelihood——."

"I don't think anything at all," I cut in. "I take proper precautions, that's all."

He made no comment on my unceremonious interruption, but the strange half-smile he gave me showed that he realised in part at least how his story had affected me. As a matter of fact I was more perturbed than I cared to admit. I had been thinking things over all day, and it had just occurred to me that, seeing we had heard nothing of them since Bryce's death, it was quite possible that they were even now following up the false clue that he had laid for them, and which one of them had got away with the night of the burglary. If that were so, why had they come back and killed Bryce? It was a curious enough situation, and the more I thought about it the more I became convinced that I was right. Our immunity so far was due solely to the fact that the others were well occupied with the faked plan they had stolen on that memorable evening. Now on top of that Albert Cumshaw must come with this circumstantial story of his and upset all my deductions. The strange part of it was, though my reason told me that he had been a victim of his own brilliant imagination, part of my mind—that part that believed in second sight and banshees and were-wolves, and stuff of that sort—told me that he was not so very much wrong after all.

"I'll get to sleep," he said, interrupting the train of my thoughts. "I'll be fresh when my turn comes for guard."

"Tell me," I said, for the matter had been puzzling me all night, "where did you learn to light your pipe with red-hot coals?"

"Oh, that," he said with a laugh. "I saw you doing it earlier in the evening, and I made up my mind that what you did I could do."

"Then it must have burnt you."

"Horribly," he said with a grimace. "Good-night."