diately concern her.

For my own sake, if for no other reason, I hurried along the winding-up
of Bryce's affairs. I saw, or fancied I saw, that the sooner I left the
house the better would Moira be pleased. For when all was said and done
there could be no denying that things were far from satisfactory.
Neither of us made any further reference to my bare-faced lying on that
ill-starred night, but the more I thought of it the more equivocal did
the present situation seem. I for one was doubly glad when at last we
finished with the lawyers, and things--blessed, indefinite word--seemed
like to settle down again.

My time of departure was no further off than twenty-four hours away when
the incident occurred that led to a hurried readjustment of my plans and
that brought us, willy-nilly, to the Valley--for so I still persist in
calling it, as if there were not another valley in the world--and the
treasure that lay there and helped us to unravel the tangled threads of
Bryce's past life.

I had my bag already packed, and had announced that I was going the next
evening, when Moira stayed me with a word.

"I've been meaning to talk to you for a long time," she said, "but
somehow I could never seem to summon up enough courage. It's about Uncle
and ... well, you know as well as I do, that there was some mystery
about him."

"Go on," I said.

"Well, he told me once that if ever anything happened to him we would
find documents in his room that would help us to take up the work where
he left off. He repeated that the very night he died. Don't you see what
that means?"

"It means that they are still there," I said soberly.

CHAPTER VII.

INTRODUCING MR. ALBERT CUMSHAW.

"That's the peculiar part of it, Jim. They should still be in the room,
because they couldn't possibly have been taken away. Yet I've hunted
high and low and I can't find them."

"And, now you find you're in difficulties, you call me in," I hinted.

"Jim, I wish you wouldn't talk that way. There's no call for us to be
continually bickering. If we can't be anything else, at least we can be
friends, can't we?"

"I suppose it's worth trying. But what have the papers to do with me?"

"They affect you as well as me, Jim. Uncle wished the two of us to carry
on his work."

"How pleasant!" I murmured. "And suppose I refuse?"

"Well," she said, with just the least gesture of helplessness, "I'll
have to do whatever I can myself. But it was Uncle's wis