The Lost Valley | Page 7

"but
there's speed-laws in existence here. That's the trouble of it. When a
man has a nice track he's interfered with, and when there isn't anyone to
meddle with him it's ten to one that he's crawling over something like a
corduroy road."
"Corduroy!" I said, and sat up and looked at him. I knew what he meant.
Any man who has ever travelled the heart-breaking log-roads of the
interior New Guinea goldfields does not need to be told what 'corduroy'
is. It is an ever-present memory, an astonishment and a nightmare.
Bryce did not speak from hearsay--the note in his voice told me
that--but was talking from experience garnered at great cost, both of
money and energy.
"Corduroy," he repeated after me. "Doesn't that sound familiar to you,
Carstairs?"
"It does," I said with emphasis. "But how the deuce----?" And then I
stopped dead. Bryce? Bryce? What was familiar about that name?
Bryce and New Guinea and----. I had it. And Walter Carstairs.
"Ever heard of Walter Carstairs?" I questioned.
"The minute I heard your name I knew you," Bryce said. "Ever heard of
Walter Carstairs? Why, he was the best friend I ever had. He saved my
life in the early days of the Woodlarks."
"According to the Dad," I said, looking him straight in the face, "it was
the other way about."

He laughed happily. "Jimmy, I'm losing my memory if that's so. But
whatever happened to him? I lost sight of him the last ten years or so."
"You would," I answered. "He stuck to the Islands. He had a life's work
planned out, but he got cut-off in the Solomons before he had reached
finality. I carried it on after that, came all the way from the Klondyke to
take it up. I got through but it took every penny I had, and that's why
this morning when I came across you I only had a boot and a half to my
feet."
"Well, well," he said kindly, "that's all changed now."
"I don't know so much about it," I told him. "You might have been the
best friend the Dad ever had, but that doesn't say you're going to keep
me. What I get I work for. I'll take charity from no man living."
Again he laughed, and his fat face crinkled up into little rolls of flesh
until he looked as if he had double chins all the way up to his eyes. I
knew now why he had been so familiar with me earlier in the day. He
was a sunny-natured old chap always, even in the hard, toilsome New
Guinea days, and I suppose his heart went out to me as the son of an
old comrade in arms, doubly so--perhaps because I had saved his life.
On the whole I rather wished I hadn't. It complicated matters so. It
made me feel bound to give him a hand, whether his enterprise was
shady or not.
If he had turned to me then and said, "I suppose I can count on you all
right?" I would have been torn between duty and inclination. He did
nothing of the sort. He made no reference to his offer of service, in fact
he seemed to have completely forgotten it, and I thought it just as well
to say nothing. The way he forebore from seizing a perfectly obvious
advantage sent him up fifty per cent. in my estimation, and by the time
we had reached the heart of the city I was quite willing to do anything
he asked me.
"I'll park the car," he said, "and then we'll go off and have some
dinner."

"Will we?" I said and eyed my tattered raiment ruefully. "I don't fancy
I'm dressed for dinner."
"Um!" he said. "You're not. I'd quite overlooked that. That bars a public
dinner. I don't fancy you'll be able to make much of one if you come
down to my place. The cook's away. I didn't expect to be back so soon."
"Cook or no cook," I told him, "if you've got anything eatable in the
house I'll guarantee to turn it up right. Give me the run of the kitchen
and put me next to the meat-safe, and you'll see wonders. I don't know
how you feel, but I'm so hungry that I'd make a meal off a pair of kid
boots."
"In that case, Carstairs, I think I'd better take you home and see what
sort of a culinary expert you are."
With that he twisted the car about and headed out for the eastern
suburbs. The place was unfamiliar to me at the time--I hadn't the
faintest idea of the street the man lived in--and in the face of what
happened later I made no enquiries. As a matter