The Lost Valley | Page 7

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 of fact the rush of events crowded all such petty details out of my mind.
"Can you drive a car?" he asked abruptly.
"I can drive anything but an Andean mule," I told him. "I tried once in the Chilian foot-hills, but after the animal dislocated my shoulder I sort of lost heart."
"I gather from the retiring modesty of your last remark," he smiled, "that you consider yourself an expert as regards all other forms of animal and mechanical traction."
"Quite so. I can always do anything on principle, and I've yet to meet the job that I'm unwilling to tackle!"
He glanced sideways at me. I didn't like the look he gave me. There was too much of appraisement in it, something that