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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gold of the Gods, by Arthur B. Reeve
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Gold of the Gods
+
+Author: Arthur B. Reeve
+
+Posting Date: September 15, 2012 [EBook #5149]
+Release Date: February, 2004
+First Posted: May 15, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLD OF THE GODS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLD OF THE GODS
+
+BY
+
+ARTHUR B. REEVE
+
+
+FRONTISPIECE BY WILL FOSTER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I   THE PERUVIAN DAGGER
+
+   II   THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
+
+  III   THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL DETECTIVE
+
+   IV   THE TREASURE HUNTERS
+
+    V   THE WALL STREET PROMOTER
+
+   VI   THE CURSE OF MANSICHE
+
+  VII   THE ARROW POISON
+
+ VIII   THE ANONYMOUS LETTER
+
+   IX   THE PAPER FIBRES
+
+    X   THE X-RAY READER
+
+   XI   THE SHOE-PRINTS
+
+  XII   THE EVIL EYE
+
+ XIII   THE POISONED CIGARETTE
+
+  XIV   THE INTERFEROMETER
+
+   XV   THE WEED OF MADNESS
+
+  XVI   THE EAR IN THE WALL
+
+ XVII   THE VOICE FROM THE AIR
+
+XVIII   THE ANTIDOTE
+
+  XIX   THE BURGLAR POWDER
+
+   XX   THE PULMOTOR
+
+  XXI   THE TELESCRIBE
+
+ XXII   THE VANISHER
+
+XXIII   THE ACETYLENE TORCH
+
+ XXIV   THE POLICE DOG
+
+  XXV   THE GOLD OF THE GODS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE PERUVIAN DAGGER
+
+
+"There's something weird and mysterious about the robbery, Kennedy.
+They took the very thing I treasure most of all, an ancient Peruvian
+dagger."
+
+Professor Allan Norton was very much excited as he dropped into Craig's
+laboratory early that forenoon.
+
+Norton, I may say, was one of the younger members of the faculty, like
+Kennedy. Already, however, he had made for himself a place as one of
+the foremost of South American explorers and archaeologists.
+
+"How they got into the South American section of the Museum, though, I
+don't understand," he hurried on. "But, once in, that they should take
+the most valuable relic I brought back with me on this last expedition,
+I think certainly shows that it was a robbery with a deep-laid,
+premeditated purpose."
+
+"Nothing else is gone?" queried Kennedy.
+
+"Nothing," returned the professor. "That's the strangest part of it--to
+me. It was a peculiar dagger, too," he continued reminiscently. "I say
+that it was valuable, for on the blade were engraved some curious Inca
+characters. I wasn't able to take the time to decipher them, down
+there, for the age of the metal made them almost illegible. But now
+that I have all my stuff unpacked and arranged after my trip, I was
+just about to try--when along comes a thief and robs me. We can't have
+the University Museum broken into that way, you know, Kennedy."
+
+"I should say not," readily assented Craig. "I'd like to look the place
+over."
+
+"Just what I wanted," exclaimed Norton, heartily delighted, and leading
+the way.
+
+We walked across the campus with him to the Museum, still chatting.
+Norton was a tall, spare man, wiry, precisely the type one would pick
+to make an explorer in a tropical climate. His features were sharp,
+suggesting a clear and penetrating mind and a disposition to make the
+most of everything, no matter how slight. Indeed that had been his
+history, I knew. He had come to college a couple of years before
+Kennedy and myself, almost penniless, and had worked his way through by
+doing everything from waiting on table to tutoring. To-day he stood
+forth as a shining example of self-made intellectual man, as cultured
+as if he had sprung from a race of scholars, as practical as if he had
+taken to mills rather than museums.
+
+We entered a handsome white-marble building in the shape of a
+rectangle, facing the University Library, a building, by the way, which
+Norton had persuaded several wealthy trustees and other donors to
+erect. Kennedy at once began examining the section devoted to Latin
+America, going over everything very carefully.
+
+I looked about, too. There were treasures from Mexico and Peru, from
+every romantic bit of the wonderful countries south of us--blocks of
+porphyry with quaint grecques and hieroglyphic painting from Mitla,
+copper axes and pottery from Cuzco, sculptured stones and mosaics,
+jugs, cups, vases, little gods and great, sacrificial stones, a
+treasure house of Aztec and Inca lore--enough to keep one occupied for
+hours merely to look at.
+
+Yet, I reflected, following Norton, in all this mass of material, the
+thief seemed to have selected one, apparently insignificant, dagger,
+the thing which Norton prized because, somehow, it bore on its blade
+something which he had not, as yet, been able to fathom.
+
+Though Kennedy looked thoroughly and patiently, it seemed as though
+there was nothing there to tell any story of the robbery, and he turned
+his attention at last to other parts of the Museum. As he made his way
+about slowly, I noted that he was looking particularly into corners,
+behind cabinets, around angles. What he expected to find I could not
+even guess.
+
+Further along and on the same side of the building we came to the
+section devoted to Egyptology. Kennedy paused. Standing there, upright
+against the wall, was a mummy case. To me, even now, the thing had a
+creepy look. Craig pushed aside the stone lid irreverently and gazed
+keenly into the uncanny depths of the stone sarcophagus. An instant
+later he was down on his hands and knees, carefully examining the
+interior by means of a pocket lens.
+
+"I think I have made a start," he remarked, rising to his feet and
+facing us with an air of satisfaction.
+
+We said nothing, and he pointed to some almost undiscernible marks in a
+thin layer of dust that had collected in the sarcophagus.
+
+"If I'm not mistaken," he went on, "your thief got into the Museum
+during the daytime, and, when no one was looking, hid here. He must
+have stayed until the place was locked up at night. Then he could rob
+at his leisure, only taking care to confine his operations to the time
+between the rather infrequent rounds of the night watchman."
+
+Kennedy bent down again. "Look," he indicated. "There are the marks of
+shoes in the dust, shoes with nails in the heels, of course. I shall
+have to compare the marks that I have found here with those I have
+collected, following out the method of the immortal Bertillon. Every
+make of shoes has its own peculiarities, both in the number and the
+arrangement of the nails. Offhand, however, I should say that these
+shoes were American-made--though that, of course, does not necessarily
+mean that an American wore them. I may even be able to determine which
+of a number of individual pairs of shoes made the marks. I cannot tell
+that yet, until I study them. Walter, I wish you'd go over to my
+laboratory. In the second right-hand drawer of my desk you'll find a
+package of paper. I'd like to have it."
+
+"Don't you think you ought to preserve the marks?" I heard Norton hint,
+as I left. He had been watching Kennedy in open-eyed amazement and
+interest.
+
+"Exactly what I am sending Walter to do," he returned. "I have some
+specially prepared paper that will take those dust marks up and give me
+a perfect replica."
+
+I hurried back as fast as I could, and Kennedy bent to the task of
+preserving the marks.
+
+"Have you any idea who might have an object in stealing the dagger?"
+Kennedy asked, when he had finished.
+
+Norton shrugged his shoulders. "I believe some weird superstitions were
+connected with it," he replied. "It had a three-sided blade, and, as I
+told you, both the blade and the hilt were covered with peculiar
+markings."
+
+There seemed to be nothing more that could be discovered from a further
+examination of the Museum. It was plain enough that the thief must have
+let himself out of a side door which had a spring lock on it and closed
+itself. Not a mark or scratch was to be found on any of the window or
+door locks; nothing else seemed to have been disturbed.
+
+Evidently the thief had been after that one, to him priceless, object.
+Having got it, he was content to get away, leaving untouched the other
+treasures, some of which were even intrinsically valuable for the metal
+and precious stones in them. The whole affair seemed so strange to me,
+however, that, somehow, I could not help wondering whether Norton had
+told us the whole or only half the story as he knew it about the dagger
+and its history.
+
+Still talking with the archaeologist, Kennedy and I returned to his
+laboratory.
+
+We had scarcely reached the door when we heard the telephone ringing
+insistently. I answered, and it happened to be a call for me. It was
+the editor of the Star endeavouring to catch me, before I started
+downtown to the office, in order to give me an assignment.
+
+"That's strange," I exclaimed, hanging up the receiver and turning to
+Craig. "I've got to go out on a murder case--"
+
+"An interesting case?" asked Craig, interrupting his own train of
+investigation with a flash of professional interest.
+
+"Why, a man has been murdered in his apartment on Central Park, West, I
+believe. Luis de Mendoza is the name, and it seems--"
+
+"Don Luis de Mendoza?" repeated Norton, with a startled exclamation.
+"Why, he was an influential Peruvian, a man of affairs in his country,
+and an accomplished scholar. I--I--if you don't mind, I'd like to go
+over with you. I know the Mendozas."
+
+Kennedy was watching Norton's face keenly. "I think I'll go, too,
+Walter," he decided. "You won't lack assistants on this story,
+apparently."
+
+"Perhaps you can be of some assistance to them, also," put in Norton to
+Kennedy, as we left.
+
+It was only a short ride downtown, and our cab soon pulled up before a
+rather ornate entrance of a large apartment in one of the most
+exclusive sections of the city. We jumped out and entered, succeeding
+in making our way to the sixth floor, where Mendoza lived, without
+interference from the hallboy, who had been completely swamped by the
+rush that followed the excitement of finding one of the tenants
+murdered.
+
+There was no missing the place. The hall had been taken over by the
+reporters, who had established themselves there, terrible as an army
+with concealed pads and pencils. From one of the morning men already
+there I learned that our old friend Dr. Leslie, the coroner, was
+already in charge.
+
+Somehow, whether it was through Kennedy's acquaintance with Dr. Leslie
+or Norton's acquaintance with the Mendozas and the Spanish tongue, we
+found ourselves beyond the barrier of the door which shut out my rivals.
+
+As we stood for a moment in a handsome and tastefully furnished living
+room a young lady passed through hurriedly. She paused in the middle of
+the room as she saw us and eyed us tremulously, as though to ask us why
+we had intruded. It was a rather awkward situation.
+
+Quickly Norton came to the rescue. "I hope you will pardon me,
+Senorita," he bowed in perfect Spanish, "but--"
+
+"Oh, Professor Norton, it is you!" she cried in English, recognizing
+him. "I'm so nervous that I didn't see you at first."
+
+She glanced from him to us, inquiringly. I recollected that my editor
+had mentioned a daughter who might prove to be an interesting and
+important figure in the mystery. She spoke in an overwrought, agitated
+tone. I studied her furtively.
+
+Inez de Mendoza was unmistakably beautiful, of the dark Spanish type,
+with soft brown eyes that appealed to one when she talked, and a figure
+which at any less tragic moment one might have been pardoned for
+admiring. Her soft olive skin, masses of dark hair, and lustrous,
+almost voluptuous, eyes contrasted wonderfully with the finely
+chiselled lines of her nose, the firm chin, and graceful throat and
+neck. Here one recognized a girl of character and family in the depths
+of whose soul smouldered all the passion of a fiery race.
+
+"I hope you will pardon me for intruding," Norton repeated. "Believe
+me, it is not with mere idle curiosity. Let me introduce my friend,
+Professor Kennedy, the scientific detective, of whom you have heard, no
+doubt. This is his assistant, Mr. Jameson, of the Star. I thought
+perhaps they might stand between you and that crowd in the hall," he
+added, motioning toward the reporters on the other side of the door.
+"You can trust them absolutely. I'm sure that if there is anything any
+of us can do to aid you in--in your trouble, you may be sure that we
+are at your service."
+
+She looked about a moment in the presence of three strangers who had
+invaded the quietness of what had been, at least temporarily, home. She
+seemed to be seeking some one on whom to lean, as though some support
+had suddenly been knocked from under her, leaving her dazed at the
+change.
+
+"Oh, madre de Dios!" she cried. "What shall I do? Oh, my father--my
+poor father!"
+
+Inez Mendoza was really a pathetic and appealing figure as she stood
+there in the room, alone.
+
+Quickly she looked us over, as if, by some sort of occult intuition of
+woman, she were reading our souls. Then, instinctively almost, she
+turned to Kennedy. Kennedy seemed to recognize her need. Norton and I
+retired, somewhat more than figuratively.
+
+"You--you are a detective?" she queried. "You can read mystery--like a
+book?"
+
+Kennedy smiled encouragingly. "Hardly as my friend Walter here often
+paints me," he returned. "Still, now and then, we are able to use the
+vast knowledge of wise men the world over to help those in trouble.
+Tell me--everything," he soothed, as though knowing that to talk would
+prove a safety-valve for her pent-up emotions. "Perhaps I can help you."
+
+For a moment she did not know what to do. Then, almost before she knew
+it, apparently, she began to talk to him, forgetting that we were in
+the room.
+
+"Tell me how the thing happened, all that you know, how you found it
+out," prompted Craig.
+
+"Oh, it was midnight, last night; yes, late," she returned wildly. "I
+was sleeping when my maid, Juanita, wakened me and told me that Mr.
+Lockwood was in the living room and wanted to see me, must see me. I
+dressed hurriedly, for it came to me that something must be the matter.
+I think I must have come out sooner than they expected, for before they
+knew it I had run across the living room and looked through the door
+into the den, you call it, over there."
+
+She pointed at a heavy door, but did not, evidently could not, let her
+eyes rest on it.
+
+"There was my father, huddled in a chair, and blood had run out from an
+ugly wound in his side. I screamed and fell on my knees beside him.
+But," she shuddered, "it was too late. He was cold. He did not answer."
+
+Kennedy said nothing, but let her weep into her dainty lace
+handkerchief, though the impulse was strong to do anything to calm her
+grief.
+
+"Mr. Lockwood had come in to visit him on business, had found the door
+into the hall open, and entered. No one seemed to be about; but the
+lights were burning. He went on into the den. There was my father--"
+
+She stopped, and could not go on at all for several minutes.
+
+"And Mr. Lockwood, who is he?" asked Craig gently.
+
+"My father and I, we have been in this country only a short time," she
+replied, trying to speak in good English in spite of her emotion, "with
+his partner in a--a mining venture--Mr. Lockwood."
+
+She paused again and hesitated, as though in this strange land of the
+north she had no idea of which way to turn for help. But once started,
+now, she did not stop again.
+
+"Oh," she went on passionately, "I don't know what it was that came
+over my father. But lately he had been a changed man. Sometimes I
+thought he was--what you call--mad. I should have gone to see a doctor
+about him," she added wildly, her feelings getting the better of her.
+"But it is no longer a case for a doctor. It is a case for a
+detective--for some one who is more than a detective. You cannot bring
+him back, but--"
+
+She could not go on. Yet her broken sentence spoke volumes, in her
+pleading, soft, musical voice, which was far more pleasing to the ear
+than that of the usual Latin-American.
+
+I had heard that the women of Lima were famed for their beauty and
+melodious voices. Senorita Inez surely upheld their reputation.
+
+There was an appealing look now in her soft deep-brown eyes, and her
+thin, delicate lips trembled as she hurried on with her strange story.
+
+"I never saw my father in such a state before," she murmured. "For days
+all he had talked about was the 'big fish,' the peje grande, whatever
+that might mean--and the curse of Mansiche."
+
+The recollection of the past few days seemed to be too much for her.
+Almost before we knew it, before Norton, who had started to ask her a
+question, could speak, she excused herself and fled from the room,
+leaving only the indelible impression of loveliness and the appeal for
+help that was irresistible.
+
+Kennedy turned to Norton. But just then the door to the den opened and
+we saw our friend Dr. Leslie. He saw us, too, and took a few steps in
+our direction.
+
+"What--you here, Kennedy?" he greeted in surprise as Craig shook hands
+and introduced Norton. "And Jameson, too? Well, I think you've found a
+case at last that will baffle you."
+
+As we talked he led the way across the living room and into the den
+from which he had just come.
+
+"It is very strange," he said, telling at once all that he had been
+able to discover. "Senor Mendoza was discovered here about midnight
+last night by his partner, Mr. Lockwood. There seem to be no clues to
+how or by whom he was murdered. No locks had been broken. I have
+examined the hall-boy who was here last night. He seems to be off his
+post a good deal when it is late. He saw Mr. Lockwood come in, and took
+him in the elevator up to the sixth floor. After that we can find
+nothing but the open door into the apartment. It is not at all
+impossible that some one might have come in when the boy was off his
+post, have walked up, even have walked down, the stairs again. In fact,
+it must have been that way. No windows, not even on the fire-escape,
+have been tampered with. In fact, the murder must have been done by
+some one admitted to the apartment late by Mendoza himself."
+
+We walked over to the couch on which lay the body covered by a sheet.
+Dr. Leslie drew down the sheet.
+
+On the face was a most awful look, a terrible stare and contortion of
+the features, and a deep, almost purple, discoloration. The muscles
+were all tense and rigid. I shall never forget that face and its look,
+half of pain, half of fear, as if of something nameless.
+
+Mendoza had been a heavy-set man, whose piercing black eyes beetled
+forth, in life, from under bushy brows. Even in death, barring that
+horrible look, he was rather distinguished-looking, and his
+close-cropped hair and moustache set him off as a man of affairs and
+consequence in his own country.
+
+"Most peculiar, Kennedy," reiterated Dr. Leslie, pointing to the
+breast. "You see that wound? I can't quite determine whether that was
+the real cause of death or not. Of course, it's a bad wound, it's true.
+But there seems to be something else here, too. Look at the pupils of
+his eyes, how contracted they are. The lungs seem congested, too. He
+has all the marks of having been asphyxiated. Yet there are no
+indications on his throat of violence such as would be necessary if
+that were the case. There could have been no such thing as illuminating
+gas, nor have we found any trace of any receptacles which might have
+held poison. I can't seem to make it out."
+
+Kennedy bent over the body and looked at it attentively for several
+minutes, while we stood back of him, scarcely uttering a word in the
+presence of this terrible thing.
+
+Deftly Kennedy managed to extract a few drops of blood from about the
+wound and transfer them to a very small test-tube which he carried in a
+little emergency pocket-case in order to preserve material for future
+study.
+
+"You say the dagger was triangular, Norton?" he asked finally, without
+looking up from his minute examination.
+
+"Yes, with another blade that shot out automatically when you knew the
+secret of pressing the hilt in a certain way. The outside triangular
+blade separated into three to allow an inner blade to shoot out."
+
+Kennedy had risen and, as Norton described the Inca dagger, looked from
+one to the other of us keenly.
+
+"That blade was poisoned," he concluded quietly. "We have a clue to
+your missing dagger. Mendoza was murdered by it!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
+
+
+"I should like to have another talk with Senorita Inez," remarked
+Kennedy, a few minutes later, as with Dr. Leslie and Professor Norton
+we turned into the living room and closed the door to the den.
+
+While Norton volunteered to send one of the servants in to see whether
+the young lady was able to stand the strain of another interview, Dr.
+Leslie received a hurry call to another case.
+
+"You'll let me know, Kennedy, if you discover anything?" he asked,
+shaking hands with us. "I shall keep you informed, also, from my end.
+That poison completely baffles me--so far. You know, we might as well
+work together."
+
+"Assuredly," agreed Craig, as the coroner left. "That," he added to me,
+as the door closed, "was one word for me and two for himself. I can do
+the work; he wants to save his official face. He never will know what
+that poison was--until I tell him."
+
+Inez had by this time so far recovered her composure that she was able
+to meet us again in the living room.
+
+"I'm very sorry to have to trouble you again," apologized Kennedy, "but
+if I am to get anywhere in this case I must have the facts."
+
+She looked at him, half-puzzled, and, I fancied, half-frightened, too.
+"Anything I can tell you--of course, ask me," she said.
+
+"Had your father any enemies who might desire his death?" shot out
+Kennedy, almost without warning.
+
+"No," she answered slowly, still watching him carefully, then adding
+hastily: "Of course, you know, no one who tries to do anything is
+absolutely without enemies, though."
+
+"I mean," repeated Craig, carefully noting a certain hesitation in her
+tone, "was there any one who, for reasons best known to himself, might
+have murdered him in a way peculiarly likely under the circumstances,
+say, with a dagger?"
+
+Inez flashed a quick glance at Kennedy, as if to inquire just how much
+or how little he really knew. I got the impression from it, at least,
+that she was holding back some suspicion for a reason that perhaps she
+would not even have admitted to herself.
+
+I saw that Norton was also following the line of Kennedy's questioning
+keenly, though he said nothing.
+
+Before Kennedy could take up the lead again, her maid, Juanita, a very
+pretty girl of Spanish and Indian descent, entered softly.
+
+"Mr. Lockwood," she whispered, but not so low that we could not hear.
+
+"Won't you ask him to come in, Nita?" she replied.
+
+A moment later a young man pushed open the door--a tall, clean-cut
+young fellow, whose face bore the tan of a sun much stronger than any
+about New York. As I took his appraisal, I found him unmistakably of
+the type of American soldier of fortune who has been carried by the
+wander-spirit down among the romantic republics to the south of our own.
+
+"Professor Kennedy," began Senorita Mendoza, presenting us all in turn,
+"let me introduce Mr. Lockwood, my father's partner in several ventures
+which brought us to New York."
+
+As we shook hands I could not help feeling that the young mining
+engineer, for such he proved to be by ostensible profession, was
+something more to her than a mere partner in her father's schemes.
+
+"I believe I've met Professor Norton," he remarked, as they shook
+hands. "Perhaps he remembers when we were in Lima."
+
+"Perfectly," replied Norton, returning the penetrating glance in kind.
+"Also in New York," he added.
+
+Lockwood turned abruptly. "Are you quite sure you are able to stand the
+strain of this interview?" he asked Inez in a low tone.
+
+Norton glanced at Kennedy and raised his eyebrows just the fraction of
+an inch, as if to call attention to the neat manner in which Lockwood
+had turned the subject.
+
+Inez smiled sadly. "I must," she said, in a forced tone.
+
+I fancied that Lockwood noted and did not relish an air of restraint in
+her words.
+
+"It was you, I believe, Mr. Lockwood, who found Senor Mendoza last
+night?" queried Kennedy, as if to read the answer into the record,
+although he already knew it.
+
+"Yes," replied Lockwood, without hesitation, though with a glance at
+the averted head of Inez, and choosing his words very carefully, as if
+trying hard not to say more than she could bear. "Yes. I came up here
+to report on some financial matters which interested both of us, very
+late, perhaps after midnight. I was about to press the buzzer on the
+door when I saw that the door was slightly ajar. I opened it and found
+lights still burning. The rest I think you must already know."
+
+Even that tactful reference to the tragedy was too much for Inez. She
+suppressed a little convulsive sob, but did not, this time, try to flee
+from the room.
+
+"You saw nothing about the den that aroused any suspicions?" pursued
+Kennedy. "No bottle, no glass? There wasn't the odour of any gas or
+drug?"
+
+Lockwood shook his head slowly, fixing his eyes on Kennedy's face, but
+not looking at him. "No," he answered; "I have told Dr. Leslie just
+what I found. If there had been anything else I'm sure I would have
+noticed it while I was waiting for Miss Inez to come in."
+
+His answers seemed perfectly frank and straight-forward. Yet somehow I
+could not get over the feeling that he, as well as Inez, was not
+telling quite all he knew--perhaps not about the murder, but about
+matters that might be related to it.
+
+Norton evidently felt the same way. "You saw no weapon--a dagger?" he
+interrupted suddenly.
+
+The young man faced Norton squarely. To me it seemed as if he had been
+expecting the question. "Not a thing," he said deliberately. "I looked
+about carefully, too. Whatever weapon was used must have been taken
+away by the murderer," he added.
+
+Juanita entered again, and Inez excused herself to answer the
+telephone, while we stood in the living room chatting for a few minutes.
+
+"What is this 'curse of Mansiche' which the Senorita has mentioned?"
+asked Kennedy, seeing a chance to open a new line of inquiry with
+Lockwood.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he returned, impatiently flicking the ashes of a
+cigarette which he had lighted the moment Inez left the room, as though
+such stories had no interest for the practical mind of an engineer.
+"Some old superstition, I suppose."
+
+Lockwood seemed to regard Norton with a sort of aversion, if not
+hostility, and I fancied that Norton, on his part, neglected no
+opportunity to let the other know that he was watching him.
+
+"I don't know much about the story," resumed Lockwood a moment later as
+no one said anything. "But I do know that there is treasure in that
+great old Chimu mound near Truxillo. Don Luis has the government
+concession to bore into the mound, too, and we are raising the capital
+to carry the scheme through to success."
+
+He had come to the end of a sentence. Yet the inflection of his voice
+showed plainly that it was not the end of the idea that had been in his
+mind.
+
+"If you knew where to dig," suddenly supplied Norton, gazing keenly
+into the eyes of the soldier of fortune.
+
+Lockwood did not answer, though it was evident that that had been the
+thought unexpressed in his remarks.
+
+The return of the Senorita to the room seemed to break the tension.
+
+"It was the house telephone," she said, in a quiet voice. "The hall-boy
+didn't know whether to admit a visitor who comes with his sympathy."
+Then she turned from us to Lockwood. "You must know him," she said,
+somewhat embarrassed. "Senor Alfonso de Moche."
+
+Lockwood suppressed a frown, but said nothing, for, a moment later, a
+young man came in. Almost in silence he advanced to Inez and took her
+hand in a manner that plainly showed his sympathy in her bereavement.
+
+"I have just heard," he said simply, "and I hastened around to tell you
+how much I feel your loss. If there is anything I can do--"
+
+He stopped, and did not finish the sentence. It was unnecessary. His
+eyes finished it for him.
+
+Alfonso de Moche was, I thought, a very handsome fellow, though not of
+the Spanish type at all. His forehead was high, with a shock of
+straight black hair, his skin rather copper-coloured, nose slightly
+aquiline, chin and mouth firm; in fact, the whole face was refined and
+intellectual, though tinged with melancholy.
+
+"Thank you," she murmured, then turned to us. "I believe you are
+acquainted with Mr. de Moche, Professor Norton?" she asked. "You know
+he is taking post-graduate work at the University."
+
+"Slightly," returned Norton, gazing at the young man in a manner that
+plainly disconcerted him. "I believe I have met his mother in Peru."
+
+Senorita Mendoza seemed to colour at the mention of Senora de Moche. It
+flashed over me that, in his greeting Alfonso had said nothing of his
+mother. I wondered if there might be a reason for it. Could it be that
+Senorita Mendoza had some antipathy which did not include the son?
+Though we did not seem to be making much progress in this way in
+solving the mystery, still I felt that before we could go ahead we must
+know the little group about which it centred. There seemed to be
+currents and cross-currents here which we did not understand, but which
+must be charted if we were to steer a straight course.
+
+"And Professor Kennedy?" she added, turning to us.
+
+"I think I have seen Mr. de Moche about the campus," said Craig, as I,
+too, shook hands with him, "although you are not in any of my classes."
+
+"No, Professor," concurred the young man, who was, however,
+considerably older than the average student taking courses like his.
+
+I found it quite enough to watch the faces of those about me just then.
+Between Lockwood and de Moche it seemed that there existed a latent
+hostility. The two eyed each other with decided disfavour. As for
+Norton, he seemed to be alternately watching each of them.
+
+An awkward silence followed, and de Moche seemed to take the cue, for
+after a few more remarks to Inez he withdrew as gracefully as he could,
+with a parting interchange of frigid formalities with Lockwood. It did
+not take much of a detective to deduce that both of the young men might
+have agreed on one thing, though that caused the most serious of
+differences between them--their estimation of Inez de Mendoza.
+
+Inez, on her part, seemed also to be visibly relieved at his departure,
+though she had been cordial enough to him. I wondered what it all meant.
+
+Lockwood, too, seemed to be ill at ease still. But it was a different
+uneasiness, rather directed at Norton than at us. Once before I had
+thought he was on the point of excusing himself, but the entrance of de
+Moche seemed to have decided him to stay at least as long as his rival.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Senorita," he now apologized, "but I really must
+go. There are still some affairs which I must attend to in order to
+protect the interests we represent." He turned to us. "You will excuse
+me, I know," he added, "but I have a very important appointment. You
+know Don Luis and I were assisting in organizing the campaign of Stuart
+Whitney to interest American manufacturers, and particularly bankers,
+in the chances in South America which lie at hand, if we are only awake
+to take advantage of them. I shall be at your service, Senorita, as
+soon as the meeting is over. I presume I shall see you again?" he
+nodded to Kennedy.
+
+"Quite likely," returned Kennedy drily.
+
+"If there is any assistance I can render in clearing up this dreadful
+thing," went on Lockwood, in a lower tone to us, "you may count on me
+absolutely."
+
+"Thank you," returned Craig, with a significant glance. "I may have to
+take up that offer."
+
+"Do so, by all means," he reiterated, bowing to Norton and backing out
+of the door.
+
+Alone again with Inez Mendoza, Kennedy turned suddenly. "Who is this
+Senor de Moche?" he asked. "I gather that you must have known him in
+Peru."
+
+"Yes," she agreed. "I knew him in Lima"; then adding, as if by way of
+confession, "when he was a student at the University."
+
+There was something in both her tone and manner that would lead one to
+believe that she had only the kindliest feelings toward de Moche,
+whatever might be the case, as it seemed, with his mother.
+
+For a moment Kennedy now advanced and took Senorita Inez by the hand.
+"I must go now," he said simply. "If there is anything which you have
+not told me, I should like to know."
+
+"No--nothing," she answered.
+
+He did not take his eyes from hers. "If you should recall anything
+else," he persisted, "don't hesitate to tell me. I will come here, or
+you may come to the laboratory, whichever is more convenient."
+
+"I shall do so," she replied. "And thank you a thousand times for the
+trouble you are going to in my behalf. You may be sure that I
+appreciate it."
+
+Norton also bade her farewell, and she thanked him for having brought
+us over. I noticed also that Norton, though considerably older than any
+of us, had apparently succumbed to the spell of her wonderful eyes and
+face.
+
+"I also would be glad to help you," he promised. "You can usually find
+me at the Museum."
+
+"Thank you all," she murmured. "You are all so kind to me. An hour ago
+I felt that I had not a friend in all this big city--except Mr.
+Lockwood. Now I feel that I am not quite all alone."
+
+She said it to Norton, but it was really meant for Kennedy. I know
+Craig shared my own feelings. It was a rare pleasure to work for her.
+She seemed most appreciative of anything that was done for her in her
+defenceless position.
+
+As we passed out of the apartment house and sought our cab again,
+Kennedy was the first to speak, and to Norton.
+
+"Do you know anything more about these men, Lockwood and de Moche?" he
+queried, as we sped uptown.
+
+"I don't know a thing," he replied cautiously. "I--I'd much prefer not
+to talk of suspicions."
+
+"But the dagger," insisted Kennedy. "Have you no suspicions of what
+became of it and who took it?"
+
+"I'd prefer not to talk of mere suspicions," he repeated.
+
+Little was said as we turned in at the campus and at last drew up
+before Norton's wing of the Museum.
+
+"You will let me know of any development, no matter how trivial?" asked
+Kennedy, as we parted. "Your dagger seems to have stirred up more
+trouble than there was any reason to suppose when you came to me first."
+
+"I should say so," he agreed. "I don't know how to repay the interest
+you have shown in its recovery. If anything else materializes, I shall
+surely get word to you immediately."
+
+As we turned to leave, I could not help thinking of the manner of
+Lockwood and Norton toward each other. The name Stuart Whitney ran
+through my head. Stuart Whitney was a trustee of the University who had
+contributed heavily, among other things, to Norton's various
+expeditions to South America. Was it that Norton felt a peculiar
+loyalty to Whitney, or was he jealous that any one else should succeed
+in interesting his patron in things South American?
+
+The actions of the two young men, Lockwood and de Moche, recurred to
+me. "Well," I remarked, as we walked along, "what do you think it is--a
+romance or a simple crime-hunt?"
+
+"Both, I suspect," replied Craig abstractedly. "Only not simple."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL DETECTIVE
+
+
+"I think I'll go into the University Library," Craig remarked, as we
+left Norton before his building. "I want to refresh my mind on some of
+those old Peruvian antiquities and traditions. What the Senorita hinted
+at may prove to be very important. I suppose you will have to turn in a
+story to the Star soon?"
+
+"Yes," I agreed, "I'll have to turn in something, although I'd prefer
+to wait."
+
+"Try to get an assignment to follow the case to the end," suggested
+Craig. "I think you'll find it worth while. Anyhow, this will give you
+a chance for a breathing space, and, if I have this thing doped out
+right, you won't get another for some time. I'll meet you over in the
+laboratory in a couple of hours."
+
+Craig hurried up the long flight of white-marble steps to the library
+and disappeared, while I jumped on the subway and ran downtown to the
+office.
+
+It took me, as I knew it would, considerably over a couple of hours to
+clear things up at the Star, so that I could take advantage of a
+special arrangement which I had made, so that I could, when a case
+warranted it, co-operate with Kennedy. My story was necessarily brief,
+but that was what I wanted just now. I did not propose to have the
+whole field of special-feature writers camping on my preserve.
+
+Uptown I hurried again, afraid that Kennedy had finished and might have
+been called away. But when I reached the laboratory he was not there,
+and I found that he had not been. Up and down I paced restlessly. There
+was nothing else to do but wait. If he was unable to keep his
+appointment here with me, I knew that he would soon telephone. What was
+it, I wondered, that kept him delving into the archaeological lore of
+the library?
+
+I had about given him up, when he hurried into the laboratory in a high
+state of excitement.
+
+"What did you find?" I queried. "Has anything happened?"
+
+"Let me tell you first what I found in the library," he replied,
+tilting his hat back on his head and alternately thrusting and
+withdrawing his fingers in his waistcoat pockets, as if in some way
+that might help him to piece together some scattered fragments of a
+story which he had just picked up.
+
+"I've been looking up that hint that the Senorita dropped when she used
+those words peje grande, which mean, literally, 'big fish,'" he
+resumed. "Walter, it fires the imagination. You have read of the wealth
+that Pizarro found in Peru, of course." Visions of Prescott flashed
+through my mind as he spoke.
+
+"Well, where are the gold and silver of the conquistadores? Gone to the
+melting-pot, centuries ago. But is there none left? The Indians in Peru
+believe so, at any rate. And, Walter, there are persons who would stop
+at nothing to get at the secret.
+
+"It is a matter of history that soon after the conquest a vast fortune
+was unearthed of which the King of Spain's fifth amounted to five
+million dollars. That treasure was known as the peje chica--the little
+fish. One version of the story tells that an Inca ruler, the great
+Cacique Mansiche, had observed with particular attention the kindness
+of a young Spaniard toward the people of the conquered race. Also, he
+had observed that the man was comparatively poor. At any rate, he
+revealed the secret of the hiding-place of the peje chica, on condition
+that a part of the wealth should be used to advance the interests of
+the Indians.
+
+"The most valuable article discovered was in the form of a fish of
+solid gold and so large that the Spaniards considered it a rare prize.
+But the Cacique assured his young friend that it was only the little
+fish, that a much greater treasure existed, worth many times the value
+of this one.
+
+"The sequel of the story is that the Spaniard forgot his promise, went
+off to Spain, and spent all his gold. He was returning for the peje
+grande, of which he had made great boasts, but before he could get it
+he was killed. Prescott, I believe, gives another version, in which he
+says that the Spaniard devoted a large part of his wealth to the relief
+of the Indians and gave large sums to the Peruvian churches. Other
+stories deny that it was Mansiche who told the first secret, but that
+it was another Indian. One may, I suppose, pay his money and take his
+choice. But the point, as far as we are concerned in this case, is that
+there is still believed to be the great fish, which no one has found.
+Who knows? Perhaps, somehow, Mendoza had the secret of the peje grande?"
+
+Kennedy paused, and I could feel the tense interest with which his
+delving into the crumbling past had now endowed this already
+fascinating case.
+
+"And the curse?" I put in.
+
+"About that we do not know," he replied. "Except that we do know that
+Mansiche was the great Cacique or ruler of northern Peru. The natives
+are believed to have buried a far greater treasure than even that which
+the Spaniards carried off. Mansiche is said to have left a curse on any
+native who ever divulged the whereabouts of the treasure, and the curse
+was also to fall on any Spaniard who might discover it. That is all we
+know--yet. Gold was used lavishly in the temples. That great hoard is
+really the Gold of the Gods. Surely, as we have seen it so far in this
+case, it must be cursed."
+
+There was a knock on the laboratory door, and I sprang to open it,
+expecting to find that it was something for Kennedy. Instead there
+stood one of the office boys of the Star.
+
+"Why, hello, Tommy," I greeted him. "What seems to be the matter now?"
+
+"A letter for you, Mr. Jameson," he replied, handing over a plain
+envelope. "It came just after you left. The Boss thought it might be
+important--something about that story, I guess. Anyhow, he told me to
+take it up to you on my way home, sir."
+
+I looked at it again. It bore simply my name and the address of the
+Star, not written, but, strange to say, printed in ungainly, rough
+characters, as though some one were either not familiar with writing
+English or desired to conceal his handwriting.
+
+"Where did it come from--and how?" I asked, as I tore the envelope open.
+
+"I don't know where, sir," replied Tommy. "A boy brought it. Said a man
+uptown gave him a quarter to deliver it to you."
+
+I looked at the contents in blank amazement. There was nothing in the
+letter except a quarter sheet of ordinary size note paper such as that
+used in typewritten correspondence.
+
+Printed on it, in characters exactly like those on the outside of the
+envelope, were the startling words:
+
+"BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE GODS."
+
+Underneath this inscription appeared the rude drawing of a dagger in
+which some effort had evidently been made to make it appear three-sided.
+
+"Well, of all things, what do you think of that?" I cried, tossing the
+thing over to Kennedy.
+
+He took it and read it; his face puckered deeply. "I'm not surprised,"
+he said, a moment later, looking up. "Do you know, I was just about to
+tell you what happened at the library. I had a feeling all the time I
+was there of being watched. I don't know why or how, but, somehow, I
+felt that some one was interested in the books I was reading. It made
+me uncomfortable. I was late, anyhow, and I decided not to give them
+the satisfaction of seeing me any more--at least in the library. So I
+have had a number of the books on Peru which I wanted reserved, and
+they'll be sent over later, here. No, I'm not surprised that you
+received this. Would you remember the boy?" he asked of Tommy.
+
+"I think so," replied Tommy. "He didn't have on a uniform, though. It
+wasn't a messenger."
+
+There was no use to question him further. He had evidently told all
+that he knew, and finally we had to let him go, with a parting
+injunction to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut.
+
+Kennedy continued to study the note on the quarter sheet of paper long
+after the boy had gone.
+
+"You know," he remarked thoughtfully, after a while, "as nearly as I
+can make the thing out with the slender information that we have so
+far, the weirdest superstitions seem to cluster about that dagger which
+Norton lost. I wouldn't be surprised if it took us far back into the
+dim past of the barbaric splendour of the lost Inca civilization of
+Peru."
+
+He waved the sheet of paper for emphasis. "You see, some one has used
+it here as a sign of terror. Perhaps somehow it bore the secret of the
+big fish--who knows? None of the writers and explorers have ever found
+it. The most they can say is that it may be handed down from father to
+son through a long line. At any rate, the secret of the hiding-place
+seems to have been safely kept. No one has ever found the treasure. It
+would be strange, wouldn't it, if it remained for some
+twentieth-century civilized man to unearth the thing and start again
+the curse that historians say was uttered and seems always to have
+followed the thing?"
+
+"Kennedy, this affair is getting on my nerves already."
+
+While Craig was speaking the door of the laboratory had opened without
+our hearing it, and there stood Norton again. He had waited until Craig
+had finished before he had spoken.
+
+We looked at him, startled, ourselves.
+
+"I had some work to do after I left you," went on Norton, without
+stopping. "In my letter-box were several letters, but I forgot to look
+at them until just now, when I was leaving. Then I picked them
+up--and--look at this thing that was among them."
+
+Norton laid down on the laboratory table a plain envelope and a quarter
+sheet of paper on which were printed, except for his own name instead
+of mine, an almost exact replica of the note which I had received.
+
+"BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE GODS."
+
+Kennedy and I looked at him. Already, evidently, he had seen that
+Kennedy held in his hand the note that had come to me.
+
+"I can't make anything out of it," went on Norton, evidently much
+worried. "First I lose the dagger. Next you say it was used to murder
+Mendoza. Then I get this. Now, if any one can get into the Museum to
+steal the dagger, they could get in to carry out any threat of revenge,
+real or fancied."
+
+Looked at in that respect, I felt that it was indeed a real cause of
+worry for Norton. But, then, it flashed over me, was not my own case
+worse? I was to be responsible for telling the story. Might not some
+unseen hand strike at me, perhaps sooner than at him?
+
+Kennedy had taken the two notes and was scanning them eagerly.
+
+Just then an automobile drew up outside, and a moment later we heard a
+tap at the door which Kennedy had closed after the entrance of Norton.
+I opened it.
+
+"Is Professor Kennedy here?" I heard a voice inquire. "I'm one of the
+orderlies at the City Hospital, next to the Morgue, where Dr. Leslie
+has his laboratory. I've a message for Professor Kennedy, if he's in."
+
+Kennedy took the envelope, which bore the stamp of Dr. Leslie's
+department, and tore it open.
+
+"My dear Kennedy," he read, in an undertone. "I've been engaged in
+investigating that poison which probably surrounds the wound in the
+Mendoza case, but as yet have nothing to report. It is certainly none
+of the things which we ordinarily run up against. Enclosed you will
+find a slip of paper and the envelope which it came in--something, I
+take it, that has been sent me by a crank. Would you treat it seriously
+or disregard it? Leslie."
+
+As Kennedy had unfolded Leslie's own letter a piece of paper had
+fluttered to the floor. I picked it up mechanically, and only now
+looked at it, as Craig finished reading.
+
+On it was another copy of the threat that had been sent to both Norton
+and myself!
+
+The hospital orderly had scarcely gone when another tap came at the
+door.
+
+"Your books from the library, Professor," announced a student who was
+employed in the library as part payment of his tuition. "I've signed
+the slip for them, sir."
+
+He deposited the books on a desk, a huge pile of them, which reached
+from his outstretched arms to his chin. As he did so the pressure of
+his arms released the pile of books and the column collapsed.
+
+From a book entitled "New and Old Peru," which fell with the pile,
+slipped a plain white envelope. Kennedy saw it before either of us, and
+seized it.
+
+"Here's one for me," he said, tearing it open.
+
+Sure enough, in the same rude printing on a quarter sheet were the
+words:
+
+"BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE GODS."
+
+We could only stare at each other and at that tell-tale sign of the
+Inca dagger underneath.
+
+What did it mean? Who had sent the warnings?
+
+Kennedy alone seemed to regard the affair as if with purely scientific
+interest. He took the four pieces of paper and laid them down before
+him on the table. Then he looked up suddenly.
+
+"They match perfectly," he said quietly, gathering them up and placing
+them in a wallet which he carried. "All the indentures of the tearing
+correspond. Four warnings seem to have been sent to those who are
+likely to find out something of the secret."
+
+Norton seemed to have gained somewhat of his composure now that he had
+been able to talk to some one.
+
+"What are you going to do--give it up?" he asked tensely.
+
+"Nothing could have insured my sticking to it harder," answered Craig
+grimly.
+
+"Then we'll all have to stick together," said Norton slowly. "We all
+seem to be in the same boat."
+
+As he rose to go he extended a hand to each of us.
+
+"I'll stick," repeated Kennedy, with that peculiar bulldog look of
+intensity on his face which I had come to know so well.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE TREASURE HUNTERS
+
+
+Norton had scarcely gone, and Kennedy was still studying the four
+pieces of paper on which the warning had been given, when our
+laboratory door was softly pushed open again.
+
+It was Senorita Mendoza, looking more beautiful than ever in her plain
+black mourning dress, the unnatural pallor of her face heightening the
+wonderful lustrous eyes that looked about as though half frightened at
+what she was doing.
+
+"I hope nothing has happened," greeted Kennedy, placing an easy-chair
+for her. "But I'm glad to see that you have confidence enough to trust
+me."
+
+She looked about doubtfully at the vast amount of paraphernalia which
+Craig had collected in his scientific warfare on crime. Though she did
+not understand it, it seemed to impress her.
+
+"No," she murmured, "nothing new has happened. You told me to call on
+you if I should think of anything else."
+
+She said it with an air as if confessing something. It was apparent
+that, whatever it was, she had known it all the time and only after a
+struggle had brought herself to telling it.
+
+"Then you have thought of something?" prompted Craig.
+
+"Yes," she replied in a low tone. Then with an effort she went on: "I
+don't know whether you know it or not, but my family is an old one, one
+of the oldest in Peru."
+
+Kennedy nodded encouragingly.
+
+"Back in the old days, after Pizarro," she hurried on, no longer able
+to choose her words, but blurting the thing out directly, "an ancestor
+of mine was murdered by an Inca dagger."
+
+She stopped again and looked about, actually frightened at her own
+temerity, evidently. Kennedy and his twentieth-century surroundings
+seemed again to reassure her.
+
+"I can't tell you the story," she resumed. "I don't know it. My father
+knew it. But it was some kind of family secret, for he never told me.
+Once when I asked him he put me off; told me to wait until I was a
+little older."
+
+"And you think that may have something to do with the case?" asked
+Kennedy, trying to draw out anything more that she knew.
+
+"I don't know," she answered frankly. "But don't you think that it is
+strange--an ancestor of mine murdered and now, hundreds of years
+afterward, my father, the last of his line in direct descent, murdered
+in the same way, by an Inca dagger that has disappeared?"
+
+"Then you were listening while I was talking to Professor Norton?" shot
+out Kennedy, not unkindly, but rather as a surprise test to see what
+she would say.
+
+"You cannot blame me for that," she returned simply.
+
+"Hardly," smiled Kennedy. "And I appreciate your reticence--as well as
+your coming here finally to tell me. Indeed, it is strange. Surely you
+must have some other suspicions," he persisted, "something that you
+feel, even though you do not know?"
+
+Kennedy was leaning forward, looking deeply into her eyes, as if he
+would read what was passing in her mind. She met his gaze for a moment,
+then looked away.
+
+"You heard Mr. Lockwood say that he had become associated with a Mr.
+Whitney, Mr. Stuart Whitney, down in Wall Street?" she ventured.
+
+Kennedy did not take his eyes from her face as he sought to extract the
+reluctant words from her.
+
+"Mr. Whitney has been largely interested in Peru, in business and in
+mining," she went on slowly. "He has given large sums to scholars down
+there, to Professor Norton's expeditions from New York. I--I'm afraid
+of that Mr. Whitney!"
+
+Her quiet tone had risen to a pitch of tremulous excitement. Her face,
+which had been pale from the strain of the tragedy, was now full of
+colour, and her breast rose and fell with suppressed emotion.
+
+"Afraid of him--why?" asked Kennedy.
+
+There was no more reticence. Once having said so much, she seemed to
+feel that she must go on and tell her fears.
+
+"Because," she went on, "he--he knows a woman--whom my father knew." A
+sudden flash of fire seemed to light up her dark eyes. "A woman of
+Truxillo," she continued, "Senora de Moche."
+
+"De Moche," repeated Kennedy, recalling the name and a still
+unexplained incident of our first interview. "Who is this Senora de
+Moche?" he asked, studying her as if she had been under a lens.
+
+"A Peruvian of an old Indian family," she replied, in a low tone, as if
+the words were forced from her. "She has come to New York with her son,
+Alfonso. You remember--you met him. He is studying here at the
+University."
+
+Again I noted the different manner in which she spoke the two names of
+mother and son. Evidently there was some feud, some barrier between her
+and the elder woman, which did not extend to Alfonso.
+
+Kennedy reached for the University catalogue and found the name,
+"Alfonso de Moche." He was, as he had told us, a post-graduate student
+in the engineering school and, therefore, not in any of Kennedy's own
+classes.
+
+"You say your father knew the Senora?" asked Kennedy.
+
+"Yes," she replied, in a low voice, "he had had some dealings with her.
+I cannot say just what they were; I do not know. Socially, of course,
+it was different. They did not belong to the same circle as ours in
+Lima."
+
+From her tone I gathered that there existed a race prejudice between
+those of old Spanish descent and the descendants of the Indians. That,
+however, could not account for her attitude. At least with her the
+prejudice did not extend to Alfonso.
+
+"Senora de Moche is a friend of Mr. Whitney?" queried Kennedy.
+
+"Yes, I believe she has placed some of her affairs in his hands. The de
+Moches live at the Prince Edward Albert Hotel, and Mr. Whitney lives
+there, too. I suppose they see more or less of each other."
+
+"H-m," mused Kennedy. "You know Mr. Whitney, I suppose?"
+
+"Not very well," she answered. "Of course, I have met him. He has been
+to visit my father, and my father has been down at his office, with Mr.
+Lockwood. But I do not know much about him, except that he is what you
+Americans call a promoter."
+
+Apparently, Inez was endeavouring to be frank in telling her
+suspicions, much more so even than Norton had been. But I could not
+help feeling that she was trying to shield some one, though not to the
+extent of consciously putting us on a wrong scent.
+
+"I shall try to see Mr. Whitney as soon as possible," said Kennedy, as
+she rose to go. "And Senora de Moche, too."
+
+I fancied that Senorita Inez, although she had not told us much, felt
+relieved.
+
+Again she murmured her thanks as she left and again Kennedy repeated
+his injunction to tell everything that happened that could possibly
+have any bearing on the case.
+
+"That's a rather peculiar phase," he considered, when we were alone,
+"this de Moche affair."
+
+"Yes," I agreed. "Do you suppose that woman could be using Whitney for
+some purpose?"
+
+"Or Whitney using her," suggested Kennedy. "There's so much to be done
+at once that I hardly know where to begin. We must see both of them as
+soon as possible. Meanwhile, that message from Dr. Leslie about the
+poison interests me. I must at least start my tests of the blood
+samples that I extracted. Walter, may I ask you to leave me here in the
+laboratory undisturbed?"
+
+I had some writing on my news story to do, and went into the room next
+to the laboratory, where I was soon busily engaged tapping my
+typewriter. Suddenly I became conscious of that feeling, which Kennedy
+had hinted at, of being watched. Perhaps I had heard a footstep outside
+and was not consciously aware of it. But, at any rate, I had the
+feeling.
+
+I stopped tapping the keys and wheeled unexpectedly about in my chair.
+I am sure that I caught just a fleeting glimpse of a face dodging back
+from the window, which was on the first floor.
+
+Whose face it was I am not prepared to assert exactly. But there was a
+face, and the fleeting glimpse of the eyes and forehead was just enough
+to give me the impression that they were familiar, without enabling me
+to identify them. At any rate, the occurrence made me feel decidedly
+uncomfortable, especially after the warning letters that we had all
+received.
+
+I sprang to my feet and ran to the door. But it was too late. The
+intruder had disappeared. Still, the more I thought about it, the more
+determined I was to try to verify an indistinct suspicion, if possible.
+I put on my hat and walked hurriedly over to the office of the
+registrar.
+
+Sure enough, I found that Alfonso de Moche had been at the University
+that day, must have attended a lecture an hour or so before. Having
+nothing else to do, I hunted up some of his professors and tried to
+quiz them about him.
+
+As I had expected, they told me that he was an excellent student,
+though very quiet and reserved. His mind seemed to run along the line
+of engineering, and particularly mining. I could not help coming to the
+conclusion that undoubtedly he, too, was infected by the furore for
+treasure hunting, in spite of his Indian ancestry.
+
+Yet there seemed to be surprisingly little known about him outside of
+the lecture room and laboratory. The professors knew that he lived with
+his mother at a hotel downtown. He seemed to have little or nothing to
+do with the other students outside of class work. Altogether he was an
+enigma, as far as the social life of the University went. It looked
+very much as though he had come to New York quietly to prepare himself
+for the search for the buried treasure. Had the Gold of the Gods lured
+him into its net, too?
+
+Reflecting on the tangle of events, the strange actions of Lockwood and
+the ambitions of Whitney, I retraced my steps in the direction of the
+laboratory, convinced that de Moche had employed at least a part of his
+time lately in spying on us. Perhaps he had seen Inez going in and out.
+Suddenly it flashed over me that the interchange of glances between de
+Moche and Lockwood indicated that she was more to him than a mere
+acquaintance. Perhaps it had been jealousy as well as treasure hunting
+that had prompted his eavesdropping.
+
+Still reflecting, I decided to turn in at the Museum and have a chat
+with Norton. I found him nervously pacing up and down the little office
+that had been accorded him in his section of the building.
+
+"I can't rid my mind of that warning," he remarked anxiously, pausing
+in his measured tread. "It seems inconceivable to me that any one would
+take the trouble to send four such warnings unless he meant it."
+
+"Quite so," I agreed, relating to him what had just happened.
+
+"I thought of something like that," he acquiesced, "and I have already
+taken some precautions."
+
+Norton waved his hand at the windows, which I had not noticed before.
+Though they were some distance above the ground, I saw now that he had
+closed and barred them at the expense of ventilation. The warnings
+seemed to have made more of an impression on him than on any of the
+rest of us.
+
+"One never can tell where or when a blow will fall with these people,"
+he explained. "You see, I've lived among them. They are a hot-blooded
+race. Besides, as you perhaps have read, they have some queer poisons
+down in South America. I mean to run no unnecessary chances."
+
+"I suppose you suspected all along that the dagger had something to do
+with the Gold of the Gods, did you not?" I hinted.
+
+Norton paused before answering, as though to weigh his words.
+"Suspected--yes," he replied. "But, as I told you, I have had no chance
+to read the inscription on it. I can't say that I took it very
+seriously--until now."
+
+"It's not possible that Stuart Whitney, who, I understand, is deeply
+interested in South America, may have had some inkling of the value of
+the dagger, is it?" I asked thoughtfully.
+
+For a full minute Norton gazed at me. "I hadn't thought of that," he
+admitted at length. "That's a new idea to me."
+
+Yet somehow I knew that Norton had thought of it, though he had not yet
+spoken about it. Was it through loyalty to the man who had contributed
+to financing his expeditions to South America?
+
+"Do you know Senora de Moche well?" I ventured, a moment later.
+
+"Fairly well," he replied. "Why?"
+
+"What do you think of her?"
+
+"Rather a clever woman," he replied noncommittally.
+
+"I suppose all the people in New York who were interested in Peru knew
+her," I pursued, adding, "Mr. Whitney, Mendoza, Lockwood."
+
+Norton hesitated, as though he was afraid of saying too much. While I
+could not help admiring his caution, I found that it was most
+exasperating. Still, I was determined to get at his point of view, if
+possible.
+
+"Alfonso seems to be a worthy son, then," I remarked. "I can't quite
+make out, though, why the Senorita should have such an obvious
+prejudice against her. It doesn't seem to extend to him."
+
+"I believe," replied Norton reluctantly, "that Mendoza had been on
+rather intimate terms with her. At least, I think you'll find the woman
+very ambitious for her son. I don't think she would have stopped at
+much to advance his interests. You must have noticed how much Alfonso
+thinks of the Senorita. But I don't think there was anything that could
+have overcome the old Castilian's prejudice. You know they pride
+themselves on never intermarrying. With Lockwood it would have been
+different."
+
+I thought I began to get some glimmering of how things were.
+
+"Whitney knows her pretty well now, doesn't he?" I shot out.
+
+Norton shrugged his shoulders. But he could not have acquiesced better
+than by his very manner.
+
+"Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Whitney know best what they are doing," he
+remarked, at length. "Why don't you and Kennedy try to see Senora de
+Moche? I'm a scientist, you know. I dislike talking about speculations.
+I'd prefer only to express opinions about things that are certainties."
+
+Perhaps Norton wished to convey the impression that the subjects I had
+broached were worth looking into. At least it was the impression I
+derived.
+
+"Still," he continued slowly, "I think I am justified in saying this
+much: I myself have been interested in watching both Alfonso de Moche
+and Lockwood when it comes to the case of the Senorita. All's fair,
+they say, in love and war. If I am any judge, there are both in this
+case, somewhere. I think you had better see the Senora and judge for
+yourself. She's a clever woman, I know. But I'm sure that Kennedy could
+make her out, even if the rest of us can't."
+
+I thanked Norton for the hint that he had given, and after chatting a
+few moments more left him alone in his office.
+
+In my room again, I went back to finish my writing. Nothing further
+occurred, however, to excite my suspicions, and at last I managed to
+finish it.
+
+I was correcting what I had written when the door opened from the
+laboratory and Craig entered. He had thrown off his old, acid-stained
+laboratory smock and was now dressed to venture forth.
+
+"Have you found out anything about the poison?" I asked.
+
+"Nothing definite yet," he replied. "That will take some time now. It's
+a strange poison--an alkaloid, I'm sure, but not one that one
+ordinarily encounters. Still, I've made a good beginning. It won't take
+long to determine it now."
+
+Craig listened with deep interest, though without comment, when I
+related what had happened, both Norton's conversation and about the
+strange visitor whom we had had peering into our windows.
+
+"Some one seems to be very much interested in what we are doing,
+Walter," he concluded simply. "I think we'd better do a little more
+outside work now, while we have a chance. If you are ready, so am I. I
+want to see what sort of treasure hunter this Stuart Whitney is. I'd
+like to know whether he is in on this secret of the Gold of the Gods,
+too."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE WALL STREET PROMOTER
+
+
+Lockwood, as we now knew, had become allied in some way with a group of
+Wall Street capitalists, headed by Stuart Whitney.
+
+Already I had heard something of Whitney. In the Street he was well
+known as an intensely practical man, though far above the average
+exploiter both in cleverness and education.
+
+As a matter of fact, Whitney had been far-sighted enough to see that
+scholarship could be capitalized, not only as an advertisement, but in
+more direct manners. Just at present one of his pet schemes was
+promoting trade through the canal between the east coast of North
+America and the west coast of South America. He had spent a good deal
+of money promoting friendship between men of affairs and wealth in both
+New York and Lima. It was a good chance, he figured, for his
+investments down in Peru were large, and anything that popularized the
+country in New York could not but make them more valuable.
+
+"Norton seemed rather averse to talking about Whitney," I ventured to
+Craig, as we rode downtown.
+
+"That may be part of Whitney's cleverness," he returned thoughtfully.
+"As a patron of art and letters, you know, a man can carry through a
+good many things that otherwise would be more critically examined."
+
+Kennedy did not say it in a way that implied that he knew anything very
+bad about Whitney. Still, I reflected, it was astute in the man to
+insure the cooperation of such people as Norton. A few thousand dollars
+judiciously spent on archaeology might cover up a multitude of sins of
+high finance.
+
+Nothing more was said by either of us, and at last we reached the
+financial district. We entered a tall skyscraper on Wall Street just
+around the corner from Broadway and shot up in the elevator to the
+floor where Whitney and his associates had a really palatial suite of
+offices.
+
+As we opened the door we saw that Lockwood was still there. He greeted
+us with a rather stiff bow.
+
+"Professor Kennedy and Mr. Jameson," he said simply, introducing us to
+Whitney, "friends of Professor Norton, I believe. I met them to-day up
+at Mendoza's."
+
+"That is a most incomprehensible affair," returned Whitney, shaking
+hands with us. "What do you make out of it?"
+
+Kennedy shrugged his shoulders and turned the remark aside without
+committing himself.
+
+Stuart Whitney was a typical promoter, a large, full-blooded man, with
+a face red and inclined to be puffy from the congested veins. His voice
+alone commanded respect, whether he said anything worth while or not.
+In fact, he had but to say that it was a warm day and you felt that he
+had scored a telling point in the conversation.
+
+"Professor Norton has asked me to look into the loss of an old Peruvian
+dagger which he brought back from his last expedition," explained
+Kennedy, endeavouring to lead the conversation in channels which might
+arrive somewhere.
+
+"Yes, yes," remarked Whitney, with a nod of interest. "He has told me
+of it. Very strange, very strange. When he came back he told me that he
+had it, along with a lot of other important finds. But I had no idea he
+set such a value on it--or, rather, that any one else might do so. It
+would have been easy to have safeguarded it here, if we had known," he
+added, with a wave of his hand in the direction of a huge chrome steel
+safe of latest design in the outer office.
+
+Lockwood, I noted, was listening intently, quite in contrast with his
+former cavalier manner of dismissing all consideration of ancient Inca
+lore as academic or unpractical. Did he know something of the dagger?
+
+"I'm very much interested in old Peruvian antiquities myself," remarked
+Kennedy, a few minutes later, "though not, of course, a scholar like
+our friend Norton."
+
+"Indeed?" returned Whitney; and I noticed for the first time that his
+eyes seemed fairly to glitter with excitement.
+
+They were prominent eyes, a trifle staring, and I could not help
+studying them.
+
+"Then," he exclaimed, rising, "you must know of the ruins of Chan-Chan,
+of Chima--those wonderful places?"
+
+Kennedy nodded. "And of Truxillo and the legend of the great fish and
+the little fish," he put in.
+
+Whitney seemed extraordinarily pleased that any one should be willing
+to discuss his hobby with him. His eyes by this time were apparently
+starting from their sockets, and I noticed that the pupils were dilated
+almost to the size of the iris.
+
+"We must sit down and talk about Peru," he continued, reaching for a
+large box of cigarettes in the top drawer of his big desk.
+
+Lockwood seemed to sense a long discussion of archaeology. He rose and
+mumbled an excuse about having something to do in the outer office.
+
+"Oh, it is a wonderful country, Professor Kennedy," went on Whitney,
+throwing himself back in his chair. "I am deeply interested in it--its
+mines, its railroads, as well as its history. Let me show you a map of
+our interests down there."
+
+He rose and passed into the next room to get the map. The moment his
+back was turned, Kennedy reached over to a typewriter desk that stood
+in a corner of the office, left open by the stenographer, who had gone.
+He took two thin second sheets of paper and a new carbon sheet. A hasty
+dab or two of the library paste completed his work.
+
+Carefully Craig laid the prepared paper on the floor just a few inches
+from the door into the outer office and scattered a few other sheets
+about, as though the wind had blown them off the desk.
+
+As Whitney returned, a big map unrolled in his hands, I saw his foot
+fall on the double sheet that Craig had laid by the door.
+
+Kennedy bent down and began picking up the papers.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," remarked Whitney brusquely. "Never mind that.
+Here's where some of our interests lie, in the north."
+
+I don't think I paid much more attention to the map than did Kennedy as
+we three bent over it. His real attention was on the paper which he had
+placed on the floor, as though fixing in his mind the exact spot on
+which Whitney had stepped.
+
+As Whitney talked rapidly about the country, we lighted the cigarettes.
+They seemed to be of a special brand. I puffed mine for a moment. There
+was a peculiar taste about it, however, which I did not exactly like.
+In fact, I think that the Latin-American cigarettes do not seem to
+appeal to most Americans very much, anyhow.
+
+While we talked, I noticed that Kennedy evidently shared my own tastes,
+for he allowed his cigarette to go out, and, after a puff or two, I did
+the same. For the sake of my own comfort, I drew one of my own from my
+case as soon as I could do so politely, and laid the stub of the other
+in an ash-tray on Whitney's desk.
+
+"Mr. Lockwood and Senor Mendoza had some joint interests in the
+country, too, didn't they?" queried Kennedy, his eye still on the
+pieces of paper near the door.
+
+"Yes," returned Whitney. "Lockwood!"
+
+"What is it?" came Lockwood's voice from outside.
+
+"Show Professor Kennedy where you and Mendoza have those concessions."
+
+The young engineer strode into the room, and I saw a smile of
+gratification cross Kennedy's face as his foot, also, fell on the paper
+by the door.
+
+Unlike Whitney, however, Lockwood bent over to gather up the sheets.
+But before he could actually do so Kennedy reached down and swept them
+just out of his reach.
+
+"Quite breezy," Kennedy covered up his action, turning to restore the
+paper to the desk.
+
+Craig had his back to them, but not to me, and I saw him fumble for an
+instant with the papers. Quickly he pressed his thumb-nail on one side,
+as though making a rough "W," while on the other side he made what
+might be an "L." Then he shoved the two sheets and the carbon into his
+pocket.
+
+I glanced up hastily. Fortunately, neither Whitney nor Lockwood had
+noted his action.
+
+For the first time, now, I noticed as I watched him that Lockwood's
+eyes, too, were a trifle stary, though not so noticeable as Whitney's.
+
+"Let me see," continued Whitney, "your concessions are all about here,
+in the north, aren't they?"
+
+Lockwood drew a pencil from his pocket and made several cross-marks
+over the names of some towns on the large map.
+
+"Those are the points that we had proposed to work," he said simply,
+"before this terrible tragedy to Mendoza."
+
+"Mining, you understand," explained Whitney. Then, after a pause, he
+resumed quickly. "Of course, you know that much has been said about the
+chances for mining investments and about the opportunities for fortunes
+for persons in South America. Peru has been the Mecca for fortune
+hunters since the days of Pizarro. But where one person has been
+successful thousands have failed because they don't know the game. Why,
+I know of one investment of hundreds of thousands that hasn't yielded a
+cent of profit just because of that."
+
+Lockwood said nothing, evidently not caring to waste time or breath on
+any one who was not a possible investor. But Whitney had the true
+promoter's instinct of booming his scheme on the chance that the
+interest inspired might be carried to some third party.
+
+"American financiers, it is true," he went on excitedly, taking out a
+beautifully chased gold cigarette case, "have lost millions in mining
+in Peru. But that is not the scheme that our group, including Mr.
+Lockwood now, has. We are going to make more millions than they ever
+dreamed of--because we are simply going to mine for the products of
+centuries of labour already done--for the great treasure of Truxillo."
+
+One could not help becoming infected by Whitney's enthusiasm.
+
+Kennedy was following him closely, while a frown of disapproval spread
+over Lockwood's face.
+
+"Then you know the secret of the hiding-place of the treasure?" queried
+Kennedy abruptly.
+
+Whitney shook his head in the negative. "It is my idea that we don't
+have to know it," he answered. "With the hints that we have collected
+from the natives, I think we can locate it with the expenditure of
+comparatively little time and money. Senor Mendoza has obtained the
+concession from the government to hunt for it on a large scale in the
+big mounds about Truxillo. We know it is there. Is not that enough?"
+
+If it had been any one less than Whitney, we should probably have said
+it was not. But it took more than that to deny anything he asserted.
+Lockwood's face was a study. I cannot say that it betrayed anything
+except disapproval of the mere discussion of the subject. In fact, it
+left me in doubt as to whether Whitney himself might not have been
+bluffing, in the certainty of finding the treasure--perhaps had already
+the secret he denied having and was preparing to cover it up by
+stumbling on it, apparently, in some other way. I recognized in Stuart
+Whitney as smooth an individual as ever we had encountered. His was all
+the sincerity of a crook. Yet he contrived to leave the whole matter in
+doubt. Perhaps in this case he actually knew what he was talking about.
+
+The telephone rang and Lockwood answered it. Though he did not mention
+her name, I knew from his very tone and manner that it was Senorita de
+Mendoza who was calling up. Evidently his continued absence had worried
+her.
+
+"There's absolutely nothing to worry about," we heard him say. "Nothing
+has changed. I shall be up to see you as soon as I can get away from
+the office."
+
+There was an air of restraint about Lockwood's remarks, not as though
+he were keeping anything from the Senorita, but as though he were
+reluctant for us to overhear anything about his affairs.
+
+Lockwood had been smoking, too, and he added the stubs of his
+cigarettes to the pile in the ash-tray on Whitney's desk. Once I saw
+Craig cast a quick glance at the tray, and I understood that in some
+way he was anxious to have a chance to investigate those cigarettes.
+
+"You saw the dagger which Norton brought back, did you not?" asked
+Kennedy of Whitney.
+
+"Only as I saw the rest of the stuff after it was unpacked," he replied
+easily. "He brought back a great many interesting objects on this last
+trip."
+
+It was apparent that whether he actually knew anything about the secret
+of the Inca dagger or not, Whitney was not to be trapped into betraying
+it. I had an idea that Lockwood was interested in knowing that fact,
+too. At any rate, one could not be sure whether these two were
+perfectly frank with each other, or were playing a game for high stakes
+between themselves.
+
+Lockwood seemed eager to get away and, with a hasty glance at his
+watch, rose.
+
+"If you wish to find me, I shall be with Senorita de Mendoza," he said,
+taking his hat and stick, and bowing to us.
+
+Whitney rose and accompanied him to the door in the outer office, his
+arm on his shoulder, conversing in a low tone that was inaudible to us.
+
+No sooner, however, had the two passed through the door, with their
+backs toward us, than Kennedy reached over quickly and swept the
+contents of the ash-tray, cigarette stubs, ashes, and all, into an
+empty envelope which was lying with some papers. Then he sealed it and
+shoved it into his pocket, with a sidelong glance of satisfaction at me.
+
+"Evidently Mr. Lockwood and the Senorita are on intimate terms,"
+hazarded Kennedy, as Whitney rejoined us.
+
+"Poor little girl," soliloquized the promoter. "Yes, indeed. And
+Lockwood is a lucky dog, too. Such eyes, such a figure--did you ever
+see a more beautiful woman?"
+
+One could not help recognizing that whatever else Whitney might have
+said that did not ring true his admiration for the unfortunate girl was
+genuine. That was not so remarkable, however. It could hardly have been
+otherwise.
+
+"You are acquainted, I suppose, with a Senora de Moche?" ventured
+Kennedy again, taking a chance shot.
+
+Whitney looked at him keenly. "Yes," he agreed, "I have had some
+dealings with her. She was an acquaintance of old Mendoza's--a woman of
+the world, clever, shrewd. I think she has but one ambition--her son.
+You have met her?"
+
+"Not the Senora," admitted Craig, "but her son is a student at the
+University."
+
+"Oh, yes, to be sure," said Whitney. "A fine fellow--but not of the
+type of Lockwood."
+
+Why he should have coupled the names was not clear for the moment. But
+he had risen, and was moving deliberately up and down the office, his
+thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, as though he were thinking of
+something very perplexing.
+
+"If I were younger," he remarked finally, of a sudden, "I would give
+both of them a race for that girl. She is the greatest treasure that
+has ever come out of the country. Ah, well--as it is, I would not place
+my money on young de Moche!"
+
+Kennedy had risen to go.
+
+"I trust you will be able to unearth some clue regarding that dagger,"
+said Whitney, as we moved toward the door. "It seems to have worried
+Norton considerably, especially since you told him that Mendoza was
+undoubtedly murdered with it."
+
+Evidently Norton kept in close touch with his patron, but Kennedy did
+not appear to be surprised at it.
+
+"I am doing my best," he returned. "I suppose I may count on your help
+as the case develops?"
+
+"Absolutely," replied Whitney, accompanying us out into the hall to the
+elevator. "I shall back Norton in anything he wants to keep the
+Peruvian collection intact and protected."
+
+Our questions were as yet unanswered. Not only had we no inkling as to
+the whereabouts of the dagger, but the source of the four warnings that
+had been sent us was still as much shrouded in mystery.
+
+Kennedy beckoned to a passing taxicab.
+
+"The Prince Edward Albert," he directed briefly.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE CURSE OF MANSICHE
+
+
+We entered the Prince Edward Albert a few minutes later, one of the new
+and beautiful family hotels uptown.
+
+Before making any inquiries, Craig gave a hasty look about the lobby.
+Suddenly I felt him take my arm and draw me over to a little alcove on
+one side. I followed the direction of his eyes. There I could see young
+Alfonso de Moche talking to a woman much older than himself.
+
+"That must be his mother," whispered Craig. "You can see the
+resemblance. Let's sit here awhile behind these palms and watch."
+
+They seemed to be engaged in an earnest conversation about something.
+Even as they talked, though we could not guess what it was about, it
+was evident that Alfonso was dearer than life to the woman and that the
+young man was a model son. Though I felt that I must admire them each
+for it, still, I reflected, that was no reason why we should not
+suspect them--perhaps rather a reason for suspecting.
+
+Senora de Moche was a woman of well-preserved middle age, a large
+woman, with dark hair and contrasting full, red lips. Her face, in
+marked contradiction to her Parisian costume and refined manners, had a
+slight copper swarthiness about it which spoke eloquently of her
+ancestry.
+
+But it was her eyes that arrested and held one's attention most.
+Whether it was in the eyes themselves or in the way that she used them,
+there could be no mistake about the almost hypnotic power that their
+owner possessed. I could not help wondering whether she might not have
+exercised it on Don Luis, perhaps was using it in some way to influence
+Whitney. Was that the reason why the Senorita so evidently feared her?
+
+Fortunately, from our vantage point, we could see without being in any
+danger of being seen.
+
+"There's Whitney," I heard Craig mutter under his breath.
+
+I looked up and saw the promoter enter from his car. At almost the same
+instant the roving eyes of the Senora seemed to catch sight of him. He
+came over and spoke to the de Moches, standing with them several
+minutes. I fancied that not for an instant did she allow the gaze of
+any one else to distract her in the projection of whatever weird ocular
+power nature had endowed her with. If it were a battle of eyes, I
+recollected the strange look that I had noted about those of both
+Whitney and Lockwood. That, however, was different from the impression
+one got of the Senora's. I felt that she would have to be pretty clever
+to match the subtlety of Whitney.
+
+Whatever it was they were talking about, one could see that Whitney and
+Senora de Moche were on very familiar terms. At the same time, young de
+Moche appeared to be ill at ease. Perhaps he did not approve of the
+intimacy with Whitney. At any rate, he seemed visibly relieved when the
+promoter excused himself and walked over to the desk to get his mail
+and then out into the cafe.
+
+"I'd like to get a better view of her," remarked Kennedy, rising. "Let
+us take a turn or two along the corridor and pass them."
+
+We sauntered forth from our alcove and strolled down among the various
+knots of people chatting and laughing. As we passed the woman and her
+son, I was conscious again of that strange feeling, which psychologists
+tell us, however, has no real foundation, of being stared at from
+behind.
+
+At the lower end of the lobby Kennedy turned suddenly and we started to
+retrace our steps. Alfonso's back was toward us now. Again we passed
+them, just in time to catch the words, in a low tone, from the young
+man, "Yes, I have seen him at the University. Every one there knows
+that he is--"
+
+The rest of the sentence was lost. But it was not difficult to
+reconstruct. It referred undoubtedly to the activities of Kennedy in
+unravelling mysteries.
+
+"It's quite evident," I suggested, "that they know that we are
+interested in them now."
+
+"Yes," he agreed. "There wasn't any use of watching them further from
+under cover. I wanted them to see me, just to find out what they would
+do."
+
+Kennedy was right. Indeed, even before we turned again, we found that
+the Senora and Alfonso had risen and were making their way slowly to
+the elevators, still talking earnestly. The lifts were around an angle,
+and before we could place ourselves so that we could observe them again
+they were gone.
+
+"I wish there was some way of adding Alfonso's shoe-prints to my
+collection," observed Craig. "The marks that I found in the dust of the
+sarcophagus in the Museum were those of a man's shoes. However, I
+suppose I must wait to get them."
+
+He walked over to the desk and made inquiries about the de Moches and
+Whitney. Each had a suite on the eighth floor, though on opposite sides
+and at opposite ends of the hall.
+
+"There's no use wasting time trying to conceal our identity now,"
+remarked Kennedy finally, drawing a card from his case. "Besides, we
+came here to see them, anyhow." He handed the card to the clerk.
+"Senora de Moche, please," he said.
+
+The clerk took the card and telephoned up to the de Moche suite. I must
+say that it was somewhat to my surprise that the Senora telephoned down
+to say that she would receive us in her own sitting room.
+
+"That's very kind," commented Craig, as I followed him into the
+elevator. "It saves planning some roundabout way of meeting her and
+comes directly to the point."
+
+The elevator whisked us up directly to the eighth floor and we stepped
+out into the heavily carpeted hallway, passing down to Room 810, which
+was the number of her suite. Further on, in 825, was Whitney's.
+
+Alfonso was not there. Evidently he had not ridden up with his mother,
+after all, but had gone out through another entrance on the ground
+floor. The Senora was alone.
+
+"I hope that you will pardon me for intruding," began Craig, with as
+plausible an explanation as he could muster, "but I have become
+interested in an opportunity to invest in a Peruvian venture, and I
+have heard that you are a Peruvian. Your son, Alfonso, I have already
+met, once. I thought that perhaps you might be able to give me some
+advice." She looked at us keenly, but said nothing. I fancied that she
+detected the subterfuge. Yet she had not tried, and did not try now to
+avoid us. Either she had no connection with the case we were
+investigating or she was an adept actress.
+
+On closer view, her eyes were really even more remarkable than I had
+imagined at a distance. They were those of a woman endowed with an
+abundance of health and energy, eyes that were full of what the old
+character readers used to call "amativeness," denoting a nature capable
+of intense passion, whether of love or hate. Yet I confess that I could
+not find anything especially abnormal about them, as I had about the
+eyes of Lockwood and Whitney.
+
+It was some time before she replied, and I gave a hasty glance about
+the apartment. Of course, it had been rented furnished, but she had
+rearranged it, adding some touches of her own which gave it quite a
+Peruvian appearance, due perhaps more to the pictures and the ornaments
+which she had introduced rather than anything else.
+
+"I suppose," she replied, at length, slowly, and looking at us as if
+she would bore right through into our minds, "I suppose you mean the
+schemes of Mr. Lockwood--and Mr. Whitney."
+
+Kennedy was not to be taken by surprise. "I have heard of their
+schemes, too," he replied noncommittally. "Peru seems to be a veritable
+storehouse of tales of buried treasure."
+
+"Let me tell you about it," she hastened, nodding at the very words
+"buried treasure." "I suppose you know that the old Chimu tribes in the
+north were the wealthiest at the time of the coming of the Spaniards?"
+
+Craig nodded, and a moment later she resumed, as if trying to marshal
+her thoughts in a logical order. "They had a custom then of burying
+with their dead all their movable property. Graves were not dug
+separately. Therefore, you see, sometimes a common grave, or huaca, as
+it is called, would be given to many. That huaca would become a cache
+of treasure in time. It was sacred to the dead, and hence it was wicked
+to touch it."
+
+The Senora's face betrayed the fact that, whatever modern civilization
+had done for her, it had not yet quite succeeded in eliminating the old
+ideas.
+
+"Back in the early part of the seventeenth century," she continued,
+leaning forward in her chair eagerly as she talked, "a Spaniard opened
+a Chimu huaca and found gold that is said to have been worth more than
+a million dollars. An Indian told him about it. Who the Indian was does
+not matter. But the Spaniard was an ancestor of Don Luis de Mendoza,
+who was found murdered to-day."
+
+She stopped short, seeming to enjoy the surprised look on our faces at
+finding that she was willing to discuss the matter so intimately.
+
+"After the Indian had shown the Spaniard the treasure in the mound,"
+she pursued, "the Indian told the Spaniard that he had given him only
+the little fish, the peje chica, but that some day he would give him
+the big fish, the peje grande. I see that you already know at least a
+part of the story, anyhow."
+
+"Yes," admitted Kennedy, "I do know something of it. But I should
+rather get it more accurately from your lips than from the hearsay
+of any one else."
+
+She smiled quietly to herself. "I don't believe," she added, "that you
+know that the _peje grande_ was not ordinary treasure. It was the
+temple gold. Why, some of the temples were literally plated over
+heavily with pure gold. That gold, as well as what had been buried in
+the huacas, was sacred. Mansiche, the supreme ruler, laid a curse on
+it, on any Indian who would tell of it, on any Spaniard who might learn
+of it. A curse lies on the finding--yes, even on the searching for the
+sacred Gold of the Gods. It is one of the most awful curses that have
+ever been uttered, that curse of Mansiche."
+
+Even as she spoke of it she lowered her voice. I felt that no matter
+how much education she had, there lurked back in her brain some of the
+primitive impulses, as well as beliefs. Either the curse of Mansiche on
+the treasure was as real to her as if its mere touch were poisonous, or
+else she was going out of her way to create that impression with us.
+
+"Somehow," she continued, in a low tone, "that Spaniard, the ancestor
+of Don Luis Mendoza, obtained some idea of the secret. He died," she
+said solemnly, flashing a glance at Craig from her wonderful eyes to
+stamp the idea indelibly. "He was stabbed by one of the members of the
+tribe. On the dagger, so I have heard, was marked the secret of the
+treasure."
+
+I felt that in a bygone age she might have made a great priestess of
+the heathen gods. Now, was she more than a clever actress?
+
+She paused, then added, "That is my tribe--my family."
+
+Again she paused. "For centuries the big fish was a secret, is still a
+secret--or, at least, was until some one got it from my brother down in
+Peru. The tradition and the dagger had been intrusted to him. I don't
+know how it happened. Somehow he seemed to grow crazy--until he talked.
+The dagger was stolen from him. How it happened, how it came into
+Professor Norton's hands, I do not know.
+
+"But, at any rate," she continued, in the same solemn tone, "the curse
+has followed it. After my brother had told the secret of the dagger and
+lost it, his mind left him. He threw himself one day into Lake
+Titicaca."
+
+Her voice broke dramatically in her passionate outpouring of the
+tragedies that had followed the hidden treasure and the Inca dagger.
+
+"Now, here in New York, comes this awful death of Senor Mendoza," she
+cried. "I don't know, no one knows, whether he had obtained the secret
+of the gold or not. At any rate, he must have thought he had it. He has
+been killed suddenly, in his own home. That is my answer to your
+inquiry about the treasure-hunting company you mentioned, whatever it
+may be. I need say no more of the curse of Mansiche. Is the Gold of the
+Gods worth it?"
+
+There could be no denying that it was real to her, whatever we might
+think of the story. I recollected the roughly printed warnings that had
+been sent to Norton, Leslie, Kennedy, and myself. Had they, then, some
+significance? I had not been able to convince myself that they were the
+work of a crank, alone. There must be some one to whom the execution of
+vengeance of the gods was an imperative duty. Unsuperstitious as I was,
+I saw here a real danger. If some one, either to preserve the secret
+for himself or else called by divine mandate to revenge, should take a
+notion to carry out the threats in the four notes, what might not
+happen?
+
+"I cannot tell you much more of fact than you probably already know,"
+she remarked, watching our faces intently and noting the effect of
+every word. "You know, I suppose, that the treasure has always been
+believed to be in a large mound, a tumulus I think you call it, visible
+from our town of Truxillo. Many people have tried to open it, but the
+mass of sand pours down on them and they have been discouraged."
+
+"No one has ever stumbled on the secret?" queried Kennedy.
+
+She shook her head. "There have been those who have sought, there are
+even those who are seeking, the point just where to bore into the
+mounds. If they could find it, they plan to construct a well-timbered
+tunnel to keep back the sand and to drive it at the right point to
+obtain this fabulous wealth."
+
+She vouchsafed the last information with a sort of quiet assurance that
+conveyed the idea, without her saying it directly, that any such
+venture was somehow doomed to failure, that desecrators were merely
+toying with fate.
+
+All through her story one could see that she felt deeply the downfall
+and betrayal of her brother, followed by the tragedy to him after the
+age-old secret had slipped from his grasp. Was there still to be
+vengeance for his downfall? Surely, I thought to myself, Don Luis de
+Mendoza could not have been in possession of the secret, unless he had
+arrived at it, with Lockwood, in some other way than by deciphering the
+almost illegible marks of the dagger. I thought of Whitney. Had he
+perhaps had something to do with the nasty business?
+
+I happened to glance at a huge pile of works on mining engineering on
+the table, the property of Alfonso. She saw me looking at them, and her
+eyes assumed a far-away, dreamy impression as she murmured something.
+
+"You must know that we real Peruvians have been so educated that we
+never explore ruins for hidden treasure, not even if we have the
+knowledge of engineering to do so. It is a sort of sacrilege to us to
+do that. The gold was not our gold, you see. Some of it belongs to the
+spirits of the departed. But the big treasure belonged to the gods
+themselves. It was the gold which lay in sheets over the temple walls,
+sacred. No, we would not touch it."
+
+I wondered cynically what would happen if some one at that moment had
+appeared with the authenticated secret. She continued to gaze at the
+books. "There are plenty of rare chances for a young mining engineer in
+Peru without that."
+
+Apparently she was thinking of her son and his studies at the
+University as they affected his future career.
+
+One could follow her thoughts, even, as they flitted from the treasure,
+to the books, to her son, and, finally, to the pretty girl for whom
+both he and Lockwood were struggling.
+
+"We are a peculiar race," she ruminated. "We seldom intermarry with
+other races. We are as proud as Senor Mendoza was of his Castilian
+descent, as proud of our unmixed lineage as any descendant of a 'belted
+earl.'"
+
+Senora de Moche made the remarks with a quiet dignity which left no
+doubt in my mind that the race feeling cut deeply.
+
+She had risen now, and in place of the awesome fear of the curse and
+tragedy of the treasure her face was burning and her eyes flashed.
+
+"Old Don Luis thought I was good enough to amuse his idle hours," she
+cried. "But when he saw that Alfonso was in love with his daughter,
+that she might return that love, then I found out bitterly that he
+placed us in another class, another caste."
+
+Kennedy had been following her closely, and I could see now that the
+cross-currents of superstition, avarice, and race hatred in the case
+presented a tangle that challenged him.
+
+There was nothing more that we could extract from her just then. She
+had remained standing, as a gentle reminder that the interview had
+already been long.
+
+Kennedy took the hint. "I wish to thank you for the trouble you have
+gone to," he bowed, after we, too, had risen. "You have told me quite
+enough to make me think seriously before I join in any such
+undertaking."
+
+She smiled enigmatically. Whether it was that she had enjoyed
+penetrating our rather clumsy excuse for seeing her, or that she felt
+that the horror of the curse had impressed us, she seemed well content.
+
+We bowed ourselves out, and, after waiting a few moments about the
+hotel without seeing Whitney anywhere, Craig called a car.
+
+"They were right," was his only comment. "A most baffling woman,
+indeed."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE ARROW POISON
+
+
+Back again in the laboratory, Kennedy threw off his coat and plunged
+again into his investigation of the blood sample he had taken from the
+wound in Mendoza's body.
+
+We had scarcely been back half an hour before the door opened and Dr.
+Leslie's perplexed face looked in on us. He was carrying a large jar,
+in which he had taken away the materials which he wished to examine.
+
+"Well," asked Kennedy, pausing with a test-tube poised over a Bunsen
+burner, "have you found anything yet? I haven't had time to get very
+far with my own tests yet."
+
+"Not a blessed thing," returned the coroner. "I'm desperate. One of the
+chemists suggested cyanide, another carbon monoxide. But there is no
+trace of either. Then he suggested nux vomica. It wasn't nux vomica;
+but my tests show that it must have been something very much like it.
+I've looked for all the ordinary known poisons and some of the
+little-known alkaloids, but, Kennedy, I always get back to the same
+point. There must have been a poison there. He did not die primarily of
+the wound. It was asphyxia due to a poison that really killed him,
+though the wound might have done so, but not quite so quickly."
+
+I could tell by the look that crossed Kennedy's face that at last a ray
+of light had pierced the darkness. He reached for a bottle on the shelf
+labelled spirits of turpentine.
+
+Then he poured a little of the blood sample from the jar which the
+coroner had brought into a clean tube and added a few drops of the
+spirits of turpentine. A cloudy, dark precipitate formed. He smiled
+quietly, and said, half to himself, "I thought so."
+
+"What is it?" asked the coroner eagerly, "nux vomica?"
+
+Craig shook his head as he stared at the black precipitate. "You were
+perfectly right about the asphyxiation, Doctor," he remarked slowly,
+"but wrong as to the cause. It was a poison--one you would never dream
+of."
+
+"What is it?" Leslie and I asked simultaneously.
+
+"Let me take all these samples and make some further tests," he said.
+"I am quite sure of it, but it is new to me. By the way, may I trouble
+you and Leslie to go over to the Museum of Natural History with a
+letter?"
+
+It was evident that he wanted to work uninterrupted, and we agreed
+readily, especially because by going we might also be of some use in
+solving the mystery of the poison.
+
+He sat down and wrote a hasty note to the director of the Museum, and a
+few moments later we were speeding over in Leslie's car.
+
+At the big building we had no trouble in finding the director and
+presenting the note. He was a close friend of Kennedy's and more than
+willing to aid him in any way.
+
+"You will excuse me a moment?" he apologized. "I will get from the
+South American exhibit just what he wants."
+
+We waited several minutes in the office until finally he returned
+carrying a gourd, incrusted on its hollow inside surface with a kind of
+blackish substance.
+
+"That is what he wants, I think," the director remarked, wrapping it up
+carefully in a box. "I don't need to ask you to tell Professor Kennedy
+to watch out how he handles the thing. He understands all about it."
+
+We thanked the director and hurried out into the car again, carrying
+the package, after his warning, as though it were so much dynamite.
+
+Altogether, I don't suppose that we could have been gone more than an
+hour.
+
+We burst into the laboratory, but, to my surprise, I did not see
+Kennedy at his table. I stopped short and looked around.
+
+There he was over in the corner, sprawled out in a chair, a tank of
+oxygen beside him, from which he was inhaling laboriously copious
+draughts. He rose as he saw us and walked unsteadily toward the table.
+
+"Why--what's the matter?" I cried, certain that m our absence an
+attempt had been made on his life, perhaps to carry out the threat of
+the curse.
+
+"N-nothing," he gasped, with an attempt at a smile. "Only I--think I
+was right--about the poison."
+
+I did not like the way he looked. His hand was unsteady and his eyes
+looked badly. But he seemed quite put out when I suggested that he was
+working too hard over the case and had better take a turn outdoors with
+us and have a bite to eat.
+
+"You--you got it?" he asked, seizing the package that contained the
+gourd and unwrapping it nervously.
+
+He laid the gourd on the table, on which were also several jars of
+various liquids and a number of other chemicals. At the end of the
+table was a large, square package, from which sounds issued, as if it
+contained something alive.
+
+"Tell me," I persisted, "what has happened. Has any one been here since
+we have been gone?"
+
+"Not a soul," he answered, working his arms and shoulders as if to get
+rid of some heavy weight that oppressed his chest.
+
+"Then what has happened that makes you use the oxygen?" I repeated,
+determined to get some kind of answer from him.
+
+He turned to Leslie. "It was no ordinary asphyxiation, Doctor," he said
+quickly.
+
+Leslie nodded. "I could see that," he admitted.
+
+"We have to deal in this case," continued Kennedy, his will-power
+overcoming his weakness, "with a poison which is apparently among the
+most subtle known. A particle of matter so minute as to be hardly
+distinguishable by the naked eye, on the point of a lancet or needle, a
+prick of the skin not anything like that wound of Mendoza's, were
+necessary. But, fortunately, more of the poison was used, making it
+just that much easier to trace, though for the time the wound, which
+might itself easily have been fatal, threw us off the scent. But given
+these things, not all the power in the world--unless one was fully
+prepared--could save the life of the person in whose flesh the wound
+was made."
+
+Craig paused a moment, and we listened breathlessly.
+
+"This poison, I find, acts on the so-called endplates of the muscles
+and nerves. It produces complete paralysis, but not loss of
+consciousness, sensation, circulation, or respiration until the end
+approaches. It seems to be one of the most powerful agents of which I
+have ever heard. When introduced in even a minute quantity it produces
+death finally by asphyxiation--by paralyzing the muscles of
+respiration. This asphyxia is what puzzled you, Leslie."
+
+He reached over and took a white mouse from the huge box on the corner
+of the table.
+
+"Let me show you what I have found," he said. "I am now going to inject
+a little of the blood serum of the murdered man into this white mouse."
+
+He took a needle and injected some of a liquid which he had isolated.
+The mouse did not even wince, so lightly did he touch it. But as we
+watched, its life seemed gently to ebb away, without pain, without
+struggle. Its breath simply seemed to stop.
+
+Next he took the gourd which we had brought and with a knife scraped
+off just the minutest particle of the black, licorice-like stuff that
+incrusted it. He dissolved the particle in some alcohol, and with a
+sterilized needle repeated his experiment on a second mouse. The effect
+was precisely similar to that produced by the blood on the first.
+
+I was intent on what Craig was doing when Dr. Leslie broke in with a
+question. "May I ask," he queried, "whether, admitting that the first
+mouse died at least apparently in the same manner as the second, you
+have proved that the poison is the same in both cases? And if it is the
+same, can you show that it affects human beings in the same way, that
+enough of it has been discovered in the blood of Mendoza to have caused
+his death? In other words, I want the last doubt set aside."
+
+If ever Craig startled me, it was by his quiet reply:
+
+"I've isolated it in his blood, extracted it, sterilized it, and I've
+tried it on myself."
+
+In breathless amazement, with eyes riveted on him, we listened. "Then
+that was what was the matter?" I blurted out. "You had been trying the
+poison on YOURSELF?"
+
+He nodded unconcernedly. "Altogether," he explained, as Leslie and I
+listened, speechless, "I was able to recover from both blood samples
+six centigrams of the poison. It is almost unknown. I could only be
+sure of what I discovered by testing the physiological effects. I was
+very careful. What else was there to do? I couldn't ask you fellows to
+try it, if I was afraid."
+
+"Good heavens!" gasped Leslie, "and alone, too."
+
+"You wouldn't have let me do it, if I hadn't got rid of you," he smiled
+quietly.
+
+Leslie shook his head. "Tried it on the dog and made himself the dog!"
+exclaimed Leslie. "I need the credit of a successful case--but I'll not
+take this one."
+
+Kennedy laughed.
+
+"Starting with two centigrams of the stuff as a moderate dose," he
+pursued, while I listened, stunned at his daring, "I injected it into
+my right arm subcutaneously. Then I slowly worked my way up to three
+and then four centigrams. You see what I had recovered was far from the
+real thing. They did not seem at first to produce any very appreciable
+results other than to cause some dizziness, slight vertigo, a
+considerable degree of lassitude, and an extremely painful headache of
+rather unusual duration."
+
+"Good night!" I exclaimed. "Didn't that satisfy you?"
+
+"Five centigrams considerably improved on it," he continued, paying no
+attention to me. "It caused a degree of lassitude and vertigo that was
+most distressing, and six centigrams, the whole amount which I had
+recovered from the samples of blood, gave me the fright of my life
+right here in this laboratory a few minutes before you came in."
+
+Leslie and I looked at each other and shook our heads.
+
+"Perhaps I was not wise in giving myself so large an injection on a day
+when I was overheated and below par otherwise, because of the strain I
+have been under in handling this case, as well as other work. However
+that may be, the added centigram produced so much more on top of the
+five centigrams I had previously taken that for a time I had reason to
+fear that that additional centigram was just the amount needed to bring
+my experiments to a permanent close.
+
+"Within three minutes of the time of injection the dizziness and
+vertigo had become so great as to make walking seem impossible. In
+another minute the lassitude rapidly crept over me, and the serious
+disturbance of my breathing made it apparent to me that walking, waving
+my arms, anything, was imperative. My lungs felt glued up, and the
+muscles of my chest refused to work. Everything swam before my eyes,
+and I was soon reduced to walking up and down the laboratory floor with
+halting steps, only preventing falling on the floor by holding fast to
+the edge of the table.
+
+"I thought of the tank of oxygen, and managed to crawl over and turn it
+on. I gulped at it. It seemed to me that I spent hours gasping for
+breath. It reminded me of what I once experienced in the Cave of the
+Winds of Niagara, where water is more abundant in the atmosphere than
+air. Yet my watch afterward indicated only about twenty minutes of
+extreme distress. But that twenty minutes is one period I shall never
+forget. I advise you, Leslie, if you are ever so foolish as to try the
+experiment, to remain below the five-centigram limit."
+
+"Believe me, I'd rather lose my job," returned Leslie.
+
+"How much of the stuff was administered to Mendoza," went on Kennedy,
+"I cannot say. But it must have been a good deal more than I took. Six
+centigrams which I recovered from these small samples are only
+nine-tenths of a grain. You see what effect that much had. I trust that
+answers your question?"
+
+Dr. Leslie was too overwhelmed to reply.
+
+"What is this deadly poison that was used on Mendoza?" I managed to ask.
+
+"You have been fortunate enough to obtain a sample of it from the
+Museum of Natural History," returned Craig. "It comes in a little
+gourd, or often a calabash. This is in a gourd. It is a blackish,
+brittle stuff, incrusting the sides of the gourd just as if it was
+poured in in the liquid state and left to dry. Indeed, that is just
+what has been done by those who manufacture it after a lengthy and
+somewhat secret process."
+
+He placed the gourd on the edge of the table, where we could see it
+closely. I was almost afraid even to look at it.
+
+"The famous traveller, Sir Robert Schomburgk, first brought it into
+Europe, and Darwin has described it. It is now an article of commerce,
+and is to be found in the United States Pharmacoepia as a medicine,
+though, of course, it is used in only very minute quantities, as a
+heart stimulant."
+
+Craig opened a book to a place he had marked. "Here's an account of
+it," he said. "Two natives were one day hunting. They were armed with
+blow-pipes and quivers full of poisoned darts made of thin, charred
+pieces of bamboo, tipped with this stuff. One of them aimed a dart. It
+missed the object overhead, glanced off the tree, and fell down on the
+hunter himself. This is how the other native reported the result:
+
+"'Quacca takes the dart out of his shoulder. Never a word. Puts it in
+his quiver and throws it in the stream. Gives me his blow-pipe for his
+little son. Says to me good-bye for his wife and the village. Then he
+lies down. His tongue talks no longer. No sight in his eyes. He folds
+his arms. He rolls over slowly. His mouth moves without sound. I feel
+his heart. It goes fast and then slow. It stops. Quacca has shot his
+last woorali dart.'"
+
+Leslie and I looked at Kennedy, and the horror of the thing sank deep
+into our minds. Woorali. What was it?
+
+"Woorali, or curare," explained Craig slowly, "is the well-known poison
+with which the South American Indians of the upper Orinoco tip their
+arrows. Its principal ingredient is derived from the Strychnos toxifera
+tree, which yields also the drug nux vomica, which you, Dr. Leslie,
+have mentioned. On the tip of that Inca dagger must have been a large
+dose of the dread curare, this fatal South American Indian arrow
+poison."
+
+"Say," ejaculated Leslie, "this thing begins to look eerie to me. How
+about that piece of paper that I sent to you with the warning about the
+curse of Mansiche and the Gold of the Gods. What if there should be
+something in it? I'd rather not be a victim of this curare, if it's all
+the same to you, Kennedy."
+
+Kennedy was thinking deeply. Who could have sent the messages to us
+all? Who was likely to have known of curare? I confess that I had not
+even an idea. All of them, any of them, might have known.
+
+The deeper we got into it, the more dastardly the crime against Mendoza
+seemed. Involuntarily, I thought of the beautiful little Senorita,
+about whom these terrible events centred. Though I had no reason for
+it, I could not forget the fear that she had for Senora de Moche, and
+the woman as she had been revealed to us in our late interview.
+
+"I suppose a Peruvian of average intelligence might know of the arrow
+poison of Indians of another country," I ventured to Craig.
+
+"Quite possible," he returned, catching immediately the drift of my
+thoughts. "But the shoe-prints indicated that it was a man who stole
+the dagger from the Museum. It may be that it was already poisoned,
+too. In that case the thief would not have had to know anything of
+curare, would not have needed to stab so deeply if he had known."
+
+I must confess that I was little further along in the solution of the
+mystery than I had been when I first saw Mendoza's body. Kennedy,
+however, did not seem to be worried. Leslie had long since given up
+trying to form an opinion and, now that the nature of the poison was
+finally established, was glad to leave the case in our hands.
+
+As for me, I was inclined to agree with Dr. Leslie, and, long after he
+had left, there kept recurring to my mind those words:
+
+BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE GODS.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE ANONYMOUS LETTER
+
+
+"I think I will drop in to see Senorita Mendoza," considered Kennedy,
+as he cleared up the materials which he had been using in his
+investigation of the arrow poison. "She is a study to me--in fact, the
+reticence of all these people is hard to combat."
+
+As we entered the apartment where the Mendozas lived, it was difficult
+to realize that only a few hours had elapsed since we had first been
+introduced to this strange affair. In the hall, however, were still
+some reporters waiting in the vain hope that some fragment of a story
+might turn up.
+
+"Let's have a talk with the boys," suggested Craig, before we entered
+the Mendoza suite. "After all, the newspaper men are the best
+detectives I know. If it wasn't for them, half our murder cases
+wouldn't ever be solved. As a matter of fact, 'yellow journals' are
+more useful to a city than half the detective force."
+
+Most of the newspaper men knew Craig intimately, and liked him,
+possibly because he was one of the few people to-day who realized the
+very important part these young men played in modern life. They crowded
+about, eager to interview him. But Craig was clever. In the rapid fire
+of conversation it was really he who interviewed them.
+
+"Lockwood has been here a long time," volunteered one of the men. "He
+seems to have constituted himself the guardian of Inez. No one gets a
+look at her while he's around."
+
+"Well, you can hardly blame him for that," smiled Craig. "Jealousy
+isn't a crime in that case."
+
+"Say," put in another, "there'd be an interesting quarter of an hour if
+he were here now. That other fellow--de Mooch--whatever his name is, is
+here."
+
+"De Moche--with her, now?" queried Kennedy, wheeling suddenly.
+
+The reporter smiled. "He's a queer duck. I was coming up to relieve our
+other man, when I saw him down on the street, hanging about the corner,
+his eyes riveted on the entrance to the apartment. I suppose that was
+his way of making love. He's daffy over her, all right. I stopped to
+watch him. Of course, he didn't know me. Just then Lockwood left. The
+Spaniard dived into the drug store on the corner as though the devil
+was after him. You should have seen his eyes. If looks were bullets, I
+wouldn't give much for Lockwood's life. With two such fellows about,
+you wouldn't catch me making goo-goo eyes at that chicken--not on your
+life."
+
+Kennedy passed over the flippant manner in view of the importance of
+the observation.
+
+"What do you think of Lockwood?" he asked.
+
+"Pretty slick," replied another of the men. "He's the goods, all right."
+
+"Why, what has he done?" asked Kennedy.
+
+"Nothing in particular. But he came out to see us once. You can't blame
+him for being a bit sore at us fellows hanging about. But he didn't
+show it. Instead he almost begged us to be careful of how we asked
+questions of the girl. Of course, all of us could see how completely
+broken up she is. We haven't bothered her. In fact, we'd do anything we
+could for her. But Lockwood talks straight from the shoulder. You can
+see he's used to handling all kinds of situations."
+
+"But did he say anything, has he done anything?" persisted Kennedy.
+
+"N-no," admitted the reporter. "I can't say he has."
+
+Craig frowned a bit. "I thought not," he remarked. "These people aren't
+giving away any hints, if they can help it."
+
+"It's my idea," ventured another of the men, "that when this case
+breaks, it will break all of a sudden. I shouldn't wonder if we are in
+for one of the sensations of the year, when it comes."
+
+Kennedy looked at him inquiringly. "Why?" he asked simply.
+
+"No particular reason," confessed the man. "Only the regular detectives
+act so chesty. They haven't got a thing, and they know it, only they
+won't admit it to us. O'Connor was here."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Nothing. He went through all the motions--'Now, pens lifted, boys,'
+and all that--talked a lot--and after it was all over he might have
+been sure no one would publish a line of his confidences. There wasn't
+a stick of copy in the whole thing."
+
+Kennedy laughed. "O'Connor's all right," he replied. "We may need him
+sorely before we get through. After all, nothing can take the place of
+the organization the police have built up. You say de Moche is in there
+yet?"
+
+"Yes. He seemed very anxious to see her. We never get a word out of
+him. I've been thinking what would happen if we tried to get him mad.
+Maybe he'd talk."
+
+"More likely he'd pull a gun," cautioned another. "Excuse ME."
+
+Kennedy said nothing, evidently content to let the newspaper men go
+their own sweet way.
+
+He nodded to them, and pressed the buzzer at the Mendoza door.
+
+"Tell Senorita Mendoza that it is Professor Kennedy," he said to
+Juanita, who opened the door, keeping it on the chain, to be sure it
+was no unwelcome intruder.
+
+Evidently she had had orders to admit us, for a second later we found
+ourselves again in the little reception room.
+
+We sat down, and I saw that Craig's attention had at once been fixed on
+something. I listened intently, too. On the other side of the heavy
+portieres that cut us off from the living room I could distinguish low
+voices. It was de Moche and Inez.
+
+Whatever the ethics of it, we could not help listening. Besides there
+was more at stake than ethics.
+
+Evidently the young man was urging her to do something that she did not
+agree with.
+
+"No," we heard her say finally, in a quiet tone, "I cannot believe it,
+Alfonso. Mr. Whitney is Mr. Lockwood's associate now. My father and Mr.
+Lockwood approved of him. Why should I do otherwise?"
+
+De Moche was talking earnestly but in a very muffled voice. We could
+not make out anything except a few scattered phrases which told us
+nothing. Once I fancied he mentioned his mother. Whatever it was that
+he was urging, Inez was firm.
+
+"No, Alfonso," she repeated, her voice a little higher and excited. "It
+cannot be. You must be mistaken."
+
+She had risen, and now moved toward the hall door, evidently forgetting
+that the folding doors behind the portieres were open. "Professor
+Kennedy and Mr. Jameson are here," she said. "Would you care to meet
+them?"
+
+He replied in the negative. Yet as he passed the reception room he
+could not help seeing us.
+
+As Inez greeted us, I saw that Alfonso was making a desperate effort to
+control his expression. He seemed to be concealing a bitter
+disappointment. Seeing us, he bowed stiffly, and, with just the murmur
+of a greeting, excused himself.
+
+He had no sooner closed the door to run the gauntlet of the sharp eyes
+in the hall than the Senorita faced us fully. She was pale and nervous.
+Evidently something that he had said to her had greatly agitated her.
+Yet with all her woman's skill she managed to hide all outward traces
+of emotion that might indicate what it was that racked her mind.
+
+"You have something to report?" she asked, a trifle anxiously.
+
+"Nothing of any great importance," admitted Craig.
+
+Was it actually a look of relief that crossed her face? Try as I could,
+it seemed to me to be an anomalous situation. She wanted the murderer
+of her father caught, naturally. Yet she did not seem to be offering us
+the natural assistance that was to be expected. Could it be that she
+suspected some one perhaps near and dear to her of having some
+knowledge, which, now that the deed was done, would do more harm than
+good if revealed? It was the only conclusion to which I could come. I
+was surprised at Kennedy's next question. Was the same idea in his
+mind, also?
+
+"We have seen Mr. Whitney," he ventured. "Just what are Mr. Lockwood's
+relations with him--and yours?"
+
+"Merely that Mr. Lockwood and my father were partners," she answered
+hastily. "They had decided that their interests would be more valuable
+by some arrangement with Mr. Whitney, who controls so much down in
+Peru."
+
+"Do you think that Senora de Moche exercises a very great influence on
+Mr. Whitney?" asked Craig, purposely introducing the name of the Indian
+woman to see what effect it might have on her.
+
+"Oh," she cried, with a little exclamation of alarm, "I hope not."
+
+Yet it was evident that she feared so.
+
+"Why is it that you fear it?" insisted Kennedy. "What has she done to
+make you fear it?"
+
+"I don't like her," returned Inez, with a frown. "My father knew
+her--too well. She is a schemer, an adventuress. Once she has a hold on
+a man, one cannot say--" She paused, then went on in a different tone.
+"But I would rather not talk about the woman. I am afraid of her. Never
+does she talk to me that she does not get something out of me that I do
+not wish to tell her. She is uncanny."
+
+Personally, I could not blame Inez for her opinion. I could understand
+it. Those often baleful eyes had a penetrating power that one might
+easily fall a victim to.
+
+"But you can trust Mr. Lockwood," he returned. "Surely he is proof
+against her, against any woman."
+
+Inez flushed. It was evident that of all the men who were interested in
+the little beauty, Lockwood was first in her mind. Yet when Kennedy put
+the question thus she hesitated. "Yes," she replied, "of course, I
+trust him. It is not that woman whom I fear with him."
+
+She said it with an air almost of defiance. There was some kind of
+struggle going on in her mind, and she was too proud to let us into the
+secret.
+
+Kennedy rose and bowed. For the present he had come to the conclusion
+that if she would not let us help her openly the only thing to do was
+to help her blindly.
+
+Half an hour later we were at Norton's apartment, not far from the
+University campus. He listened intently as Kennedy told such parts of
+what we had done as he chose. At the mention of the arrow poison, he
+seemed startled beyond measure.
+
+"You are sure of it?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Positive, now," reiterated Kennedy.
+
+Norton's face was drawn in deep lines. "If some one has the secret," he
+cried hastily, "who knows when and on whom next he may employ it?"
+
+Coming from him so soon after the same idea had been hinted at by the
+coroner, I could not but be impressed by it.
+
+"The very novelty of the thing is our best protection," asserted
+Kennedy confidently. "Once having discovered it, if Walter gives the
+thing its proper value in the Star, I think the criminal will be
+unlikely to try it again. If you had had as much experience in crime as
+I have had, you would see that it is not necessarily the unusual that
+is baffling. That may be the surest way to trace it. Often it is
+because a thing is so natural that it may be attributed to any person
+among several, equally well."
+
+Norton eyed us keenly, and shook his head. "You may be right," he said
+doubtfully. "Only I had rather that this person, whoever he may be, had
+fewer weapons."
+
+"Speaking of weapons," broke in Kennedy, "you have had no further idea
+of why the dagger might have been taken?"
+
+"There seems to have been so much about it that I did not know," he
+returned, "that I am almost afraid to have an opinion. I knew that its
+three-sided sheath inclosed a sharp blade, yet who would have dreamed
+that that blade was poisoned?"
+
+"You are lucky not to have scratched yourself with it by accident while
+you were studying it."
+
+"Possibly I might have done it, if I had had it in my possession
+longer. It was only lately that I had leisure to study it."
+
+"You knew that it might offer some clue to the hidden treasure of
+Truxillo?" suggested Kennedy. "Have you any recollection of what the
+inscriptions on it said?"
+
+"Yes," returned Norton, "I had heard the rumours about it. But Peru is
+a land of tales of buried treasure. No, I can't say that I paid much
+more attention to it than you might have done if some one asserted that
+he had another story of the treasure of Captain Kidd. I must confess
+that only when the thing was stolen did I begin to wonder whether,
+after all, there might not be something in it. Now it is too late to
+find out. From the moment when I found that it was missing from my
+collection I have heard no more about it than you have found out. It is
+all like a dream to me. I cannot believe even yet that a mere bit of
+archaeological and ethnological specimen could have played so important
+a part in the practical events of real life."
+
+"It does seem impossible," agreed Kennedy. "But it is even more
+remarkable than that. It has disappeared without leaving a trace, after
+having played its part."
+
+"If it had been a mere robbery," considered Norton, "one might look for
+its reappearance, I suppose, in the curio shops. For to-day thieves
+have a keen appreciation of the value of such objects. But, now that
+you have unearthed its use against Mendoza--and in such a terrible
+way--it is not likely that that will be what will happen to it. No, we
+must look elsewhere."
+
+"I thought I would tell you," concluded Kennedy, rising to go. "Perhaps
+after you have considered it over night some idea may occur to you."
+
+"Perhaps," said Norton doubtfully. "But I haven't your brilliant
+faculty of scientific analysis, Kennedy. No, I shall have to lean on
+you, in that, not you on me."
+
+We left Norton, apparently now more at sea than ever. At the laboratory
+Kennedy plunged into some microphotographic work that the case had
+suggested to him, while I dashed off, under his supervision, an account
+of the discovery of curare, and telephoned it down to the Star in time
+to catch the first morning edition, in the hope that it might have some
+effect in apprising the criminal that we were hard on his trail, which
+he had considered covered.
+
+I scanned the other papers eagerly in the morning for Kennedy, hoping
+to glean at least some hints that others who were working on the case
+might have gathered. But there was nothing, and, after a hasty bite of
+breakfast, we hurried back to take up the thread of the investigation
+where we had laid it down.
+
+To our surprise, on the steps of the Chemistry Building, as we
+approached, we saw Inez Mendoza already waiting for us in a high state
+of agitation. Her face was pale, and her voice trembled as she greeted
+us.
+
+"Such a dreadful thing has come to me," she cried, even before Kennedy
+could ask her what the trouble was.
+
+From her handbag she drew out a crumpled, dirty piece of paper in an
+envelope.
+
+"It came in the first mail," she explained. "I could not wait to send
+it to you. I brought it myself. What can it mean?"
+
+Kennedy unfolded the paper. Printed in large characters, in every way
+similar to the four warnings that had been sent to us, was just one
+ominous line. We read:
+
+"Beware the man who professes to be a friend of your father."
+
+I glanced from the note to Kennedy, then to Inez. One name was in my
+mind, and before I knew it I had spoken it.
+
+"Lockwood?" I queried inadvertently.
+
+Her eyes met mine in sharp defiance. "Impossible," she exclaimed. "It
+is some one trying to injure him with me. Beware of Mr. Lockwood? How
+absurd!"
+
+Yet it must have meant Lockwood. No one else could have been meant. It
+was he, most of all, who might be called a friend of her father. She
+seemed to see the implication without a word from us.
+
+I could not help sympathizing with the brave girl in her struggle
+between the attack against Lockwood and her love and confidence in him.
+It did not need words to tell me that evidence must be overwhelming to
+convince her that her lover might be involved in any manner.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE PAPER FIBRES
+
+
+Kennedy examined the anonymous letter carefully for several minutes,
+while we watched him in silence.
+
+"Too clever to use a typewriter," he remarked, still regarding the note
+through the lens of a hand-glass. "Almost any one would have used a
+machine. That would have been due to the erroneous idea that
+typewriting cannot be detected. The fact is that the typewriter is
+perhaps a worse means of concealing identity than is disguised
+handwriting, especially printing like this. It doesn't afford the
+effective protection to the criminal that one supposes. On the
+contrary, the typewriting of such a note may be the direct means by
+which it can be traced to its source. We can determine what kind of
+machine it was done with, then what particular machine was used can be
+identified."
+
+He paused and indicated a number of little instruments which he had
+taken from a drawer and laid on the table, as he tore off a bit of the
+corner of the sheet of paper and examined it.
+
+"There is one thing I can do now, though," he continued. "I can study
+the quality of the paper in this sheet. If it were only torn like those
+warnings we have already received, it might perhaps be mated with
+another piece as accurately as if the act had been performed before our
+eyes."
+
+He picked up a little instrument with a small curved arm and a finely
+threaded screw that brought the two flat surfaces of the arm and the
+end of the screw together.
+
+"There is no such good fortune in this case, however," he resumed,
+placing the paper between the two small arms. "But by measurements made
+by this vernier micrometer caliper I can find the precise thickness of
+the paper as compared to the other samples."
+
+He turned to a microscope and placed the corner of the paper under it.
+Then he drew from the drawer the four scraps of paper which had already
+been sent to us, as well as a pile of photographs.
+
+"Under ordinary circumstances," he explained, "I should think that what
+I am doing would be utterly valueless as a clue to anything. But we are
+reduced to the minutiae in this affair. And to-day science is not ready
+to let anything pass as valueless."
+
+He continued to look at the various pieces of paper under the
+microscope. "I find under microscopic examination," he went on,
+addressing Inez, but not looking up from the eye-piece as he shifted
+the papers, "that the note you have received, Senorita Mendoza, is
+written on a rather uncommon linen bond paper. Later I shall take a
+number of microphotographs of it. I have here, also, about a hundred
+microphotographs of the fibres in other kinds of paper, many of them
+bonds. These I have accumulated from time to time in my study of the
+subject. None of them, as you can see, shows fibres resembling this one
+in question, so that we may conclude that it is of uncommon quality.
+
+"Here I have the fibres, also, of four pieces of paper that have
+already figured in the case. These four correspond, as well as the
+indentures of the torn edges. As for the fibres, lest you should
+question the accuracy of the method, I may say that I know of a case
+where a man in Germany was arrested, charged with stealing a government
+bond. He was not searched until later. There was no evidence, save that
+after the arrest a large number of spitballs were found around the
+courtyard under his cell window. This method of comparing the fibres of
+the regular government paper was used, and by it the man was convicted
+of stealing the bond. I think it is unnecessary to add that in the
+present case I can see definitely that not only the four pieces of
+paper that bore warnings to us were the same kind, but that this whole
+sheet, with its anonymous warning to you, is also the same."
+
+Inez Mendoza looked at Kennedy as though he possessed some weird power.
+Her face, which had already been startled into an expression of fear at
+his mention of Lockwood, now was pale.
+
+"Other warnings?" she repeated tremulously.
+
+Quickly Kennedy explained what had already happened to us, watching the
+effect on her as he read of the curse of Mansiche and the Gold of the
+Gods.
+
+"Oh," she cried, mastering her emotion with a heroic effort, "I wish my
+father had never become mixed up in the business. Ever since I was a
+little girl I have heard these vague stories of the big fish and the
+little fish, the treasure, and the curse. But I never thought they were
+anything but fairy tales. You remember, when I first saw you, I did not
+even tell them to you."
+
+"Yes," returned Kennedy. "I remember. But had you no other reason? Did
+you, down in your heart, think them really fairy tales?"
+
+She shuddered. "Perhaps not," she murmured. "But I have heard enough of
+you detectives to know that you do not think a woman's fears exactly
+evidence."
+
+"Still they might lead to evidence," suggested Kennedy.
+
+She looked at him, more startled than ever, for already he had given
+her a slight exhibition of his powers.
+
+"Mr. Kennedy," she exclaimed, "I am positively afraid of you, afraid
+that every little thing I do may lead to something I don't intend."
+
+There was a frankness about the remark that would have been flattering
+from a man, but from her excited sympathy.
+
+"No," she went on, "I have nothing tangible--only my feelings. I fear I
+must admit that my father had enemies, though who they are I cannot
+tell you. No, it is all in my heart--not in my head. There are those
+whom I dislike--and there are those whom I like and trust. You may call
+me foolish, but I cannot help trusting--Mr. Lockwood."
+
+She had not meant to say his name, and Kennedy and I looked at her in
+surprise.
+
+"You see?" she continued. "Every time I talk I say something, convey
+some impression that is the opposite of what I wish. Oh--what shall I
+do? Have I no one to trust?"
+
+She was crying.
+
+"You may trust me, Senorita," said Kennedy, in a low tone, pausing
+before her. "At least I have no other interest than finding the truth
+and helping you. There--there. We have had enough to-day. I cannot ask
+you to try to forget what has happened. That would be impossible. But I
+can ask you, Senorita, to have faith--faith that it will all turn out
+better, if you will only trust me. When you feel stronger--then come to
+me. Tell me your fears--or not--whichever does you the most good. Only
+keep your mind from brooding. Face it all as you know your father would
+have you do."
+
+Kennedy's words were soothing. He seemed to know that tears were the
+safety-valve she needed.
+
+"Mr. Jameson will see that you get home safely in a taxicab," he
+continued. "You can trust him as you would myself."
+
+I can imagine circumstances under which I would have enjoyed escorting
+Inez to her home, but today was not one of the times. Yet she seemed so
+helpless, so grateful for everything we did for her that I did not need
+even the pressure of her little hand as she hurried into the apartment
+from the car with a hasty word of thanks.
+
+"You will tell Mr. Kennedy--you will both be--so careful?" she
+hesitated before leaving me.
+
+I assured her that we would, wondering what she might fear for us, as I
+drove away again. There did not happen to be any of the newspaper men
+about at the time, and I did not stop.
+
+Back in the laboratory, I found Kennedy arranging something under the
+rug at the door as I came up the hall.
+
+"Don't step there, Walter," he cautioned. "Step over the rug. I'm
+expecting visitors. How was she when she arrived home?"
+
+I told him of her parting injunction.
+
+"Not bad advice," he remarked. "I think there's a surprise back of
+those warnings. They weren't sent just for effect."
+
+He had closed the door, and we were standing by the table, looking at
+the letters, when we heard a noise at the door.
+
+It was Norton again.
+
+"I've been thinking of what you told me last night," he explained,
+before Kennedy had a chance to tell him to step over the rug. "Has
+anything else happened?"
+
+Kennedy tossed over the anonymous letter, and Norton read it eagerly.
+
+"Whom does it mean?" he asked, quickly glancing up, then adding, "It
+might mean any of us who are trying to help her."
+
+"Exactly," returned Kennedy. "Or it might be Lockwood, or even de
+Moche. By the way, you know the young man pretty well, don't you? I
+wonder if you could find him anywhere about the University this morning
+and persuade him to visit me?"
+
+"I will try," agreed Norton. "But these people are so very suspicious
+just now that I can't promise."
+
+Norton went out a few minutes later to see what he could do to locate
+Alfonso, and Kennedy replaced another blank sheet of paper for that
+under the rug on which Norton had stepped before we could warn him.
+
+No sooner had he gone than Kennedy reached for the telephone and called
+Whitney's office. Lockwood was there, as he had hoped, and, after a
+short talk, promised to drop in on us later in the morning.
+
+It was fully half an hour before Norton returned, having finally found
+Alfonso. De Moche entered the laboratory with a suspicious glance
+about, as though he thought something might have been planted there for
+him.
+
+"I had a most interesting talk with your mother yesterday," began
+Kennedy, endeavouring by frankness to put the young man at ease. "And
+this morning, already, Senorita Mendoza has called on me."
+
+De Moche was all attention at the words. But before he could say
+anything Kennedy handed him the anonymous letter. He read it, and his
+face clouded as he handed it back.
+
+"You have no idea who could have sent such a note?" queried Craig, "or
+to whom it might refer?"
+
+He glanced at Norton, then at us. It was clear that some sort of
+suspicion had flashed over him. "No," he said quickly, "I know no one
+who could have sent it."
+
+"But whom does it mean?" asked Kennedy, holding him to the part that he
+avoided.
+
+The young man shrugged his shoulders. "She has many friends," he
+answered simply.
+
+"Yes," persisted Kennedy, "but few against whom she might be warned in
+this way. You do not think it is Professor Norton, for instance--or
+myself?"
+
+"Oh, no, no--hardly," he replied, then stopped, realizing that he had
+eliminated all but Lockwood, Whitney, and himself.
+
+"It could not be Mr. Lockwood?" demanded Craig.
+
+"Who sent it?" he asked, looking up.
+
+"No--whom it warns against."
+
+De Moche had known what Kennedy meant, but had preferred to postpone
+the answer. It was native never to come to the point unless he was
+forced to do so. He met our eyes squarely. He had not the penetrating
+power that his mother possessed, yet his was a sharp faculty of
+observation.
+
+"Mr. Lockwood is very friendly with her," he admitted, then seemed to
+think something else necessary to round out the idea. "Mr. Kennedy, I
+might have told her the same myself. Senorita Mendoza has been a very
+dear friend--for a long time."
+
+I had been so used to having him evasive that now I did not exactly
+know what to make of such a burst of confidence. It was susceptible of
+at least two interpretations. Was he implying that it was sent to cast
+suspicion on him, because he felt that way himself or because he
+himself was her friend?
+
+"There have been other warnings," pursued Kennedy, "both to myself and
+Mr. Jameson, as well as Professor Norton and Dr. Leslie. Surely you
+must have some idea of the source."
+
+De Moche shook his head. "None that I can think of," he replied. "Have
+you asked my mother?"
+
+"Not yet," admitted Kennedy.
+
+De Moche glanced at his watch. "I have a lecture at this hour," he
+remarked, evidently glad of an excuse to terminate the interview.
+
+As he left, Kennedy accompanied him to the door, careful himself to
+step over the mat.
+
+"Hello, what's new?" we heard a voice in the hall.
+
+It was Lockwood, who had come up from downtown. Catching sight of de
+Moche, however, he stopped short. The two young men met face to face.
+Between them passed a glance of unconcealed hostility, then each nodded
+stiffly.
+
+De Moche turned to Kennedy as he passed down the hall. "Perhaps it may
+have been sent to divert suspicion--who can tell?" he whispered.
+
+Kennedy nodded appreciatively, noting the change.
+
+At the sound of Lockwood's voice both Norton and I had taken a step
+further after them out into the hall, Norton somewhat in advance. As de
+Moche disappeared for his lecture, Kennedy turned to me from Lockwood
+and caught my eye. I read in his glance that fell from me to the mat
+that he wished me quietly to abstract the piece of paper which he had
+placed under it. I bent down and did so without Lockwood seeing me.
+
+"Why was he here?" demanded Lockwood, with just a trace of defiance in
+his voice, as though he fancied the meeting had been framed.
+
+"I have been showing this to every one who might help me," returned
+Kennedy, going back into the laboratory after giving me an opportunity
+to dispose of the shoe-prints.
+
+He handed the anonymous letter and the other warnings to the young
+soldier of fortune, with a brief explanation.
+
+"Why don't they come out into the open, whoever they are?" commented
+Lockwood, laying the papers down carelessly again on the table. "I'll
+meet them--if they mean me."
+
+"Who?" asked Kennedy.
+
+Lockwood faced Norton and ourselves.
+
+"I'm not a mind reader," he said significantly. "But it doesn't take
+much to see that some one wants to throw a brick at me. When I have
+anything to say I say it openly. Inez Mendoza without friends just now
+would be a mark, wouldn't she?"
+
+His strong face and powerful jaw were set in a menacing scowl. He would
+be a bold man who would have come between Lockwood and the lady under
+the circumstances.
+
+"You are confident of Mr. Whitney?" inquired Kennedy.
+
+"Ask Norton," replied Lockwood briefly. "He knew him long before I did."
+
+Norton smiled quietly. "Mr. Kennedy should know what my opinion of Mr.
+Whitney is, I think," replied Norton confidently.
+
+"I trust that you will succeed in running these blackmailers down,"
+pursued Lockwood, still standing. "If I did not have more than I can
+attend to already since the murder of Mendoza I'd like to take a hand
+myself. It begins to look to me, after reading that letter, as though
+there was nothing too low for them to attempt. I shall keep this latest
+matter in mind. If either Mr. Whitney or myself get any hint, we'll
+turn it over to you."
+
+Norton left shortly after Lockwood, and Kennedy again picked up the
+letter and scanned it. "I could learn something, I suppose, if I
+analyzed this printing," he considered, "but it is a tedious process.
+Let me see that envelope again. H-m, postmarked by the uptown
+sub-station, mailed late last night. Whoever sent it must have done so
+not very far from us here. Lockwood seemed to take it as though it
+applied to himself very readily, didn't he? Much more so than de Moche.
+Only for the fact that the fibres show it to be on paper similar to the
+first warnings, I might have been inclined to doubt whether this was
+bona fide. At least, the sender must realize now that it has produced
+no appreciable effect--if any was intended."
+
+Kennedy's last remark set me thinking. Could some one have sent the
+letter not to produce the effect apparently intended, but with the
+ultimate object of diverting suspicion from himself? Lockwood, at
+least, had not seemed to take the letter very seriously.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE X-RAY READER
+
+
+"I think I'll pay another visit to Whitney, in spite of all that Norton
+and Lockwood say about him," remarked Kennedy, considering the next
+step he would take in his investigation.
+
+Accordingly, half an hour later we entered his Wall Street office,
+where we were met by a clerk, who seemed to remember us.
+
+"Mr. Whitney is out just at present," he said, "but if you will be
+seated I think I can reach him by telephone."
+
+As we sat in the outer office while the clerk telephoned from Whitney's
+own room the door opened and the postman entered and laid some letters
+on a table near us. Kennedy could not help seeing the letter on top of
+the pile, and noticed that it bore a stamp from Peru. He picked it up
+and read the postmark, "Lima," and the date some weeks previous. In the
+lower corner, underscored, were the words "Personal--Urgent."
+
+"I'd like to know what is in that," remarked Craig, turning it over and
+over.
+
+He appeared to be considering something, for he rose suddenly, and with
+a nod of his head to himself, as though settling some qualm of
+conscience, shoved the letter into his pocket.
+
+A moment later the clerk returned. "I've just had Mr. Whitney on the
+wire," he reported. "I don't think he'll be back at least for an hour."
+
+"Is he at the Prince Edward Albert?" asked Craig.
+
+"I don't know," returned the clerk, oblivious to the fact that we must
+have seen that in order to know the telephone number he must have known
+whether Mr. Whitney was there or elsewhere.
+
+"I shall come in again," rejoined Kennedy, as we bowed ourselves out.
+Then to me he added, "If he is with Senora de Moche and they are at the
+Edward Albert, I think I can beat him back with this letter if we
+hurry."
+
+A few minutes later, in his laboratory, Kennedy set to work quickly
+over an X-ray apparatus. As I watched him, I saw that he had placed the
+letter in it.
+
+"These are what are known as 'low tubes,'" he explained. "They give out
+'soft rays.'"
+
+He continued to work for several minutes, then took the letter out and
+handed it to me.
+
+"Now, Walter," he said brusquely, "if you will just hurry back down
+there to Whitney's office and replace that letter, I think I will have
+something that will astonish you--though whether it will have any
+bearing on the case remains to be seen. At least I can postpone seeing
+Whitney himself for a while."
+
+I made the trip down again as rapidly as I could. Whitney was not back
+when I arrived, but the clerk was there, and I could not very well just
+leave the letter on the table again.
+
+"Mr. Kennedy would like to know when he can see Mr. Whitney," I said,
+on the spur of the moment. "Can't you call him up again?"
+
+The clerk, as I had anticipated, went into Whitney's office to
+telephone. Instead of laying the letter on the table, which might have
+excited suspicion, I stuck it in the letter slot of the door, thinking
+that perhaps they might imagine that it had caught there when the
+postman made his rounds.
+
+A moment later the clerk returned. "Mr. Whitney is on his way down
+now," he reported.
+
+I thanked him, and said that Kennedy would call him up when he arrived,
+congratulating myself on the good luck I had had in returning the
+letter.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, a few minutes later, when I had rejoined Craig
+in the laboratory.
+
+He was poring intently over what looked like a negative.
+
+"The possibility of reading the contents of documents inclosed in a
+sealed envelope," he replied, still studying the shadowgraph closely,
+"has already been established by the well-known English scientist, Dr.
+Hall Edwards. He has been experimenting with the method of using X-rays
+recently discovered by a German scientist, by which radiographs of very
+thin substances, such as a sheet of paper, a leaf, an insect's body,
+may be obtained. These thin substances, through which the rays used
+formerly to pass without leaving an impression, can now be easily
+radiographed."
+
+I looked carefully as he traced out something on the queer negative. On
+it, it was easily possible, following his guidance, to read the words
+inscribed on the sheet of paper inside. So admirably defined were all
+the details that even the gum on the envelope and the edges of the
+sheet of paper inside the envelope could be distinguished.
+
+"It seems incredible," I exclaimed, scarcely believing what I actually
+saw. "It is almost like second sight."
+
+Kennedy smiled. "Any letter written with ink having a mineral base can
+be radiographed," he added. "Even when the sheet is folded in the usual
+way, it is possible, by taking a radiograph, as I have done,
+stereoscopically. Then every detail can be seen standing out in relief.
+Besides, it can be greatly magnified, which aids in deciphering it if
+it is indistinct or jumbled up. Some of it looks like mirror-writing.
+Ah," he continued, "here's something interesting."
+
+Together we managed to trace out the contents of several paragraphs
+laboriously, the gist of which I give here:
+
+"LIMA, PERU.
+
+"DEAR WHITNEY:
+
+"Matters are progressing very favorably here, considering the stoppage
+of business due to the war. I am doing everything in my power to
+conserve our interests, and now and then, owing to the scarcity of
+money, am able to pick up a concession cheaply, which will be of
+immense value to us later.
+
+"However, it is not so much of business that I wish to write you at the
+present time. You know that my friend Senora de Moche, with her son,
+Alfonso, is at present in New York. Doubtless she has already called on
+you and tried to interest you in her own properties here. I need not
+advise you to be very careful in dealing with her.
+
+"The other day I heard a rumour that may prove interesting to you,
+regarding Norton and his work here on his last trip. As we know, he has
+succeeded in finding and getting out of the country an Inca dagger
+which, I believe, bears a very important inscription. I do not know
+anything definite about it, as these people are very reticent. But no
+doubt he has told you all about it by this time. If it should prove of
+value, I depend on you to let me know, so that I may act at this end
+accordingly.
+
+"What I am getting at is this: I understand that from rumours and
+remarks of the Senora she believes that Norton took an unfair advantage
+during her absence. What the inscription is I don't know, but from the
+way these people down here act one would think that they all had a
+proprietary interest in the relic. What it is all about I don't know.
+But you will find the Senora both a keen business woman and an
+accomplished antiquarian, if you have not already discovered it.
+
+"In regard to Lockwood and Mendoza, if we can get them in on our side,
+it ought to prove a winning combination. There are stories here of how
+de Moche has been playing on Mendoza's passions--she's thoroughly
+unscrupulous and Don Luis is somewhat of a Don Juan. I write this to
+put you on guard. Her son, Alfonso, whom you perhaps have met also, is
+of another type, though I have heard it said that he laid siege to Inez
+Mendoza in the hope of becoming allied with one of the oldest families.
+
+"Such, at least, is the gossip down here. I cannot presume to keep you
+posted at such a distance, but thought I had better write what is in
+every one's mouth. As for the inscribed dagger which Norton has taken
+with him, I rely on you to inform me. There seems to be a great deal of
+mystery connected with it, and I am unable even to hazard a guess as to
+its nature. Fortunately, you are on the spot
+
+"Very sincerely yours,
+
+"HAGGERTY."
+
+"So," remarked Kennedy, as he read over the translation of the
+skiagraph which he had jotted down as we picked out the letters and
+words, "that's how the land lies. Everybody seems to have appreciated
+the importance of the dagger."
+
+"Except Norton," I could not help putting in in disgust.
+
+"And now it's gone," he continued, "just as though some one had dropped
+it overboard. I believe I will keep that appointment you made for me
+with Whitney, after all."
+
+Thus it happened that I found myself a third time entering Whitney's
+building. I was about to step into the elevator, when Kennedy tugged at
+my arm and pulled me back.
+
+"Hello, Norton," I heard him say, as I turned and caught sight of the
+archaeologist just leaving an elevator that had come down.
+
+Norton's face plainly showed that he was worried.
+
+"What the matter?" asked Kennedy, putting the circumstances together.
+"What has Whitney been doing?"
+
+Norton seemed reluctant to talk, but having no alternative motioned to
+us to step aside in the corridor.
+
+"It's the first time I've talked with him since the dagger was
+stolen--that is, about the loss," he said nervously. "He called me up
+half an hour ago and asked me to come down."
+
+I looked at Kennedy significantly. Evidently it must have been just
+after his return to the office and receipt of the letter which I had
+stuck in the letter slot.
+
+"He was very angry over something," continued Norton. "I'm sure it was
+not my fault if the dagger was stolen, and I'm sure that managing an
+expedition in that God-forsaken country doesn't give you time to read
+every inscription, especially when it is almost illegible, right on the
+spot. There was work enough for months that I brought back, along with
+that. Sometimes Whitney's unreasonable."
+
+"You don't think he could have known something about the dagger all
+along?" ventured Craig.
+
+Norton puckered his eyes. "He never said anything," he replied. "If he
+had asked me to drop other things for that, why, of course, I would
+have done so. We can't afford to lose him as a contributor to the
+exploration fund. Confound it--I'm afraid I've put my foot in it this
+time."
+
+Kennedy said nothing, and Norton continued, growing more excited:
+"Everybody's been talking to Whitney, telling him all kinds of
+things--Lockwood, the de Moches, heaven knows who else. Why don't they
+come out and face me? I've a notion to try to carry on my work
+independently. Nothing plays hob with scholarship like money. You'd
+think he owned me body and soul, and the collection, too, if you heard
+him talk. Why, he accused me of carelessness in running the Museum, and
+heaven knows I'm not the curator--I'm not even the janitor!"
+
+Norton was excited, but I could not help feeling that he was also
+relieved. "I've been preparing for the time when I'd have to cut
+loose," he went on finally. "Now, I suppose it is coming. Ah, well,
+perhaps it will be better--who can tell? I may not do so much, but it
+will all be mine, with no strings attached. Perhaps, after all, it is
+for the best."
+
+Talking over his troubles seemed to do Norton some good, for I am sure
+that he left us in a better frame of mind than we had found him.
+
+Kennedy wished him good-luck, and we again entered the lift.
+
+We found Whitney in an even greater state of excitement than Norton had
+been. I am sure that if it had been any one else than Kennedy he would
+have thrown him out, but he seemed to feel that he must control himself
+in our presence.
+
+"What do you know about that fellow Norton, up at your place?" he
+demanded, almost before we had seated ourselves.
+
+"A very hard-working, ambitious man his colleagues tell me," returned
+Kennedy, purposely I thought, as if it had been a red rag flaunted
+before a bull.
+
+"Hard-working--yes," bellowed Whitney. "He has worked me hard. I send
+him down to Peru--yes, I put up most of the money. Then what does he
+do? Just kids me along, makes me think he's accomplishing a whole
+lot--when he's actually so careless as to let himself be robbed of what
+he gets with my money. I tell you, you can't trust anybody. They all
+double-cross you. I swear, I think Lockwood and I ought to go it alone.
+I'm glad I found that fellow out. Let himself be robbed--a fine piece
+of work! Why, that fellow couldn't see through a barn door--after the
+horse was stolen," he concluded, mixing his metaphors in his anger.
+
+"Evidently some one has been telling you something," remarked Kennedy.
+"We tried to see you twice this morning, but couldn't find you."
+
+His tone was one calculated to impress Whitney with the fact that he
+had been watching and had some idea of where he really was. Whitney
+shot a sharp glance at Craig, whose face betrayed nothing.
+
+"Ambitious--I should say so," repeated Whitney, reverting to Norton to
+cover up this new change of the subject. "Well--let him be ambitious.
+We can get along without him. I tell you, Kennedy, no one is
+indispensable. There is always some way to get along--if you can't get
+over an obstacle, you can get around it. I'll dispense with Mr. Norton.
+He's an expensive luxury, anyhow. I'm just as well satisfied."
+
+There was real vexation in Whitney's voice, yet as he talked he, too,
+seemed to cool down. I could not help thinking that both Norton and
+Whitney were perhaps just a bit glad at the break. Had both of them got
+out of each other all that they wanted--Norton his reputation and
+Whitney--what?
+
+He cooled down so rapidly now that almost I began to wonder whether his
+anger had been genuine. Did he know more about the dagger than
+appeared? Was this his cover--to disown Norton?
+
+"It seems to me that Senora de Moche is ambitious for her son, too,"
+remarked Kennedy, tenaciously trying to force the conversation into the
+channel he chose.
+
+"How's that?" demanded Whitney, narrowing his eyes down into a squint
+at Kennedy's face, a proceeding that served by contrast to emphasize
+the abnormal condition of the pupils which I had already noticed both
+in his eyes and Lockwood's.
+
+"I don't think she'd object to having him marry into one of the leading
+families in Peru," ventured Kennedy, paraphrasing what we had already
+read in the letter.
+
+"Perhaps Senorita Mendoza herself can be trusted to see to that,"
+Whitney replied with a quick laugh.
+
+"To say nothing of Mr. Lockwood," suggested Craig.
+
+Whitney looked at him quizzically, as though in doubt just how much
+this man knew.
+
+"Senora de Moche puzzles me," went on Kennedy. "I often wonder whether
+superstition or greed would rule her if it came to the point in this
+matter of the Gold of the Gods, as they all seem to call the buried
+treasure at Truxillo. She's a fascinating woman, but I can't help
+feeling that with her one is always playing with fire."
+
+Whitney eyed us knowingly. I had long ago taken his measure as a man
+quite susceptible to a pretty face, especially if accompanied by a
+well-turned ankle.
+
+"I never discuss politics during business hours," he laughed, with a
+self-satisfied air. "You will excuse me? I have some rather important
+letters that I must get off."
+
+Kennedy rose, and Whitney walked to the door with us, to call his
+stenographer.
+
+We had scarcely said good-bye and were about to open the outer door
+when it was pushed open from outside, and Lockwood bustled in.
+
+"No more anonymous letters, I hope?" he queried, in a tone which I
+could not determine whether serious or sarcastic.
+
+Kennedy answered in the negative. "Not unless you have one."
+
+"I? I rather think the ready letter-writers know better than to waste
+time on me. That little billet doux seems to have quite upset the
+Senorita, though. I don't know how many times she has called me up to
+see if I was all right. I begin to think that whoever wrote it has done
+me a good turn, after all."
+
+Lockwood did not say it in a boastful way, but one could see that he
+was greatly pleased at the solicitude of Inez.
+
+"She thinks it referred to you, then?" asked Kennedy.
+
+"Evidently," he replied; then added, "I won't say but that I have taken
+it seriously, too."
+
+He slapped his hip pocket. Under the tail of his coat bulged a
+blue-steel automatic.
+
+"You still have no idea who could have sent it, or why?"
+
+Lockwood shook his head. "Whoever he is, I'm ready," he replied grimly,
+bowing us out.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE SHOE-PRINTS
+
+
+"I'm afraid we've neglected the Senorita a bit, in our efforts to
+follow up what clues we have in the case," remarked Kennedy, as we rode
+uptown again. "She needs all the protection we can give her. I think
+we'd better drop around there, now that she is pretty likely to be left
+alone."
+
+Accordingly, instead of going back to the laboratory, we dropped off
+near the apartment of the Mendozas and walked over from the subway.
+
+As we turned the corner, far down the long block I could see the
+entrance to the apartment.
+
+"There she is now," I said to Kennedy, catching sight of her familiar
+figure, clad in sombre black, as she came down the steps. "I wonder
+where she can be going."
+
+She turned at the foot of the steps and, as chance would have it,
+started in the opposite direction from us.
+
+"Let us see," answered Kennedy, quickening his pace.
+
+She had not gone very far before a man seemed to spring up from nowhere
+and meet her. He bowed, and walked along beside her.
+
+"De Moche," recognized Kennedy.
+
+Alfonso had evidently been waiting in the shadow of an entrance down
+the street, perhaps hoping to see her, perhaps as our newspaper friend
+had seen before, to watch whether Lockwood was among her callers. As we
+walked along, we could see the little drama with practically no fear of
+being seen, so earnestly were they talking.
+
+Even during the few minutes that the Senorita was talking with him no
+one would have needed to be told that she really had a great deal of
+regard for him, whatever might be her feelings toward Lockwood.
+
+"I should say that she wants to see him, yet does not want to see him,"
+observed Kennedy, as we came closer.
+
+She seemed now to have become restive and impatient, eager to cut the
+conversation short.
+
+It was quite evident at the same time that Alfonso was deeply in love
+with her, that though she tried to put him off he was persistent. I
+wondered whether, after all, some of the trouble had not been that
+during his lifetime the proud old Castilian Don Luis could never have
+consented to the marriage of his daughter to one of Indian blood. Had
+he left a legacy of fear of a love forbidden by race prejudice?
+
+In any event, the manner of Alfonso's actions about the Mendoza
+apartment was such that one could easily imagine his feelings toward
+Lockwood, whom he saw carrying off the prize under his very eyes.
+
+As for his mother, the Senora, we had already seen that Peruvians of
+her caste were also a proud old race. Her son was the apple of her eye.
+Might not some of her feelings be readily accounted for? Who were these
+to scorn her race, her family?
+
+We had walked along at a pace that finally brought us up with them. As
+Kennedy and I bowed, Alfonso seemed at first to resent our intrusion,
+while Inez seemed rather to welcome it as a diversion.
+
+"Can we not expect you?" the young man repeated. "It will be only for a
+few minutes this afternoon, and my mother has something of very great
+importance to tell."
+
+He was half pleading, half apologizing. Inez glanced hastily around at
+Kennedy, uncertain what to say, and hoping that he might indicate some
+course. Surreptitiously, Kennedy nodded an affirmative.
+
+"Very well, then," she replied reluctantly, not to seem to change what
+had been her past refusal too suddenly. "I may ask Professor Kennedy,
+too?"
+
+He could scarcely refuse before us. "Of course," he agreed, quickly
+turning to us. "We were speaking about meeting this afternoon at four
+in the tea room of the Prince Edward. You can come?"
+
+Though the invitation was not over-gracious, Kennedy replied, "We
+should be delighted to accompany Miss Inez, I am sure. We happened to
+be passing this way and thought we would stop in to see if anything new
+had happened. Just as we turned the corner we saw you disappearing down
+the street, and followed. I trust everything is all right?"
+
+"Nothing more has happened since this morning," she returned, with a
+look that indicated she understood that Kennedy referred to the
+anonymous letter. "I had a little shopping to do. If you will excuse
+me, I think I will take a car. This afternoon--at four."
+
+She nodded brightly as we assisted her into a taxicab and left us three
+standing there on the curb. For a moment it was rather awkward. To
+Alfonso her leaving was somewhat as though the sun had passed under a
+cloud.
+
+"Are you going up toward the University?" inquired Kennedy.
+
+"Yes," responded the young man reluctantly.
+
+"Then suppose we walk. It would take only a few more minutes,"
+suggested Kennedy.
+
+Alfonso could not very well refuse, but started off at a brisk pace.
+
+"I suppose these troubles interfere seriously with your work," pursued
+Craig, as we fell into his stride.
+
+"Yes," he admitted, "although much of my work just now is only
+polishing off what I have already learned--getting your American point
+of view and methods. You see, I have had an idea that the canal will
+bring both countries into much closer relations than before. And if you
+will not learn of us, we must learn of you."
+
+"It is too bad we Americans don't take more interest in the countries
+south of us," admitted Craig. "I think you have the right idea, though.
+Such men as Mr. Whitney are doing their best to bring the two nations
+closer together."
+
+I watched the effect of the mention of Whitney's name. It seemed
+distasteful, only in a lesser degree than Lockwood's.
+
+"We do not need to be exploited," he ventured. "My belief is that we
+should not attract capital in order to take things out of the country.
+If we might keep our own earnings and transform them into capital, it
+would be better. That is why I am doing what I am at the University."
+
+I could not believe that it explained the whole reason for his presence
+in New York. Without a doubt the girl who had just left us weighed
+largely in his mind, as well as his and his mother's ambitions, both
+personal and for Peru.
+
+"Quite reasonable," accepted Kennedy. "Peru for the Peruvians. Yet
+there seems to be such untold wealth in the country that taking out
+even quite large sums would not begin to exhaust the natural resources."
+
+"But they are ours, they belong to us," hastened de Moche, then caught
+the drift of Kennedy's remarks, and was on his guard.
+
+"Buried treasure, like that which you call the Gold of the Gods, is
+always fascinating," continued Kennedy. "The trouble with such easy
+money, however, is that it tends to corrupt. In the early days history
+records its taint. And I doubt whether human nature has changed much
+under the veneer of modern civilization. The treasure seems to leave
+its trail even as far away as New York. It has at least one murder to
+its credit already."
+
+"There has been nothing but murder and robbery from the time that the
+peje chica was discovered," asserted the young man sadly. "You are
+quite right."
+
+"Truly it would seem to have been cursed," added Craig. "The spirit of
+Mansiche must, indeed, watch over it. I suppose you know of the loss of
+the old Inca dagger from the University Museum and that it was that
+with which Don Luis was murdered?"
+
+It was the first time Kennedy had broached the subject to de Moche, and
+I watched closely to see what was its effect.
+
+"Perhaps it was a warning," commented Alfonso, in a solemn tone, that
+left me in doubt whether it was purely superstitious dread or in the
+nature of a prophecy of what might be expected from some quarter of
+which we were ignorant.
+
+"You have known of the existence of the dagger always, I presume,"
+continued Kennedy. "Have you or any one you know ever sought to
+discover its secret and search it out?"
+
+"I think my mother told you we never dig for treasure," he answered.
+"It would be sacrilegious. Besides, there is more treasure buried by
+nature than that dedicated to the gods. There is only one trouble that
+may hurt our natural resources--the get-rich-quick promoter. I would
+advise looking out for him. He flourishes in a newly opened country
+like Peru. That curse, I suppose, is much better understood by
+Americans than the curse of Mansiche. But as for me, you must remember
+that the curse is part of my religion, as it were."
+
+We had reached the campus by this time, and parted at the gate, each to
+go his way.
+
+"You will drop in on me if you hear anything?" invited Craig.
+
+"Yes," promised Alfonso. "We shall see you at four."
+
+With this parting reminder he turned toward the School of Mines while
+we debouched off toward the Chemistry Building.
+
+"The de Moches are nobody's tools," I remarked. "That young man seems
+to have a pretty definite idea of what he wants to do."
+
+"At least he puts it so before us," was all that Kennedy would grant.
+"He seems to be as well informed of what passed at that visit to the
+Senora as though he had been there too."
+
+We had scarcely opened the laboratory door when the ringing of the
+telephone told us that some one had been trying to get in touch for
+some time.
+
+"It was Norton," said Kennedy, hanging up the receiver. "I imagine he
+wants to know what happened after we left him and went up to see
+Whitney."
+
+That was, in fact, just what Norton wanted, as well as to make clear to
+us how he felt on the subject.
+
+"Really, Kennedy," he remarked, "it must be fine to feel that your
+chair in the University is endowed rather than subsidized. You saw how
+Whitney acted, you say. Why, he makes me feel as if I were his hired
+man, instead of head of the University's expedition. I'm glad it's
+over. Still, if you could find that dagger and have it returned it
+might look better for me. You have no clue, I suppose?"
+
+"I'm getting closer to one," replied Craig confidently, though on what
+he could base any optimism I could not see.
+
+The same idea seemed to be in Norton's mind. "You think you will have
+something tangible soon?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"I've had more slender threads than these to work on," reassured
+Kennedy. "Besides, I'm getting very little help from any of you. You
+yourself, Norton, at the start left me a good deal in the dark over the
+history of the dagger."
+
+"I couldn't do otherwise," he defended. "You understand now, I guess,
+how I have always been tied, hand and foot, by the Whitney influence.
+You'll find that I can be of more service, now."
+
+"Just how did you get possession of the dagger?" asked Kennedy, and
+there flashed over me the recollection of the story told by the Senora,
+as well as the letter which we had purloined.
+
+"Just picked it up from an Indian who had an abnormal dislike to work.
+They said he was crazy, and I guess perhaps he was. At any rate, he
+later drowned himself in the lake, I have heard."
+
+"Could he have been made insane, do you think?" ruminated Craig. "It's
+possible that he was the victim of somebody, I understand. The insanity
+might have been real enough without the cause being natural."
+
+"That's an interesting story," returned Norton. "Offhand, I can't seem
+to recall much about the fellow, although some one else might have
+known him very well."
+
+Evidently he either did not know the tale as well as the Senora, or was
+not prepared to take us entirely into his confidence.
+
+"Who is Haggerty?" asked Craig, thinking of the name signed to the
+letter we had read.
+
+"An agent of Whitney and his associates, who manages things in Lima,"
+explained Norton. "Why?"
+
+"Nothing--only I have heard the name and wondered what his connection
+might be. I understand better now."
+
+Kennedy seemed to be anxious to get to work on something, and, after a
+few minutes, Norton left us.
+
+No sooner had the door closed than he took the glass-bell jar off his
+microscope and drew from a table drawer several scraps of paper on
+which I recognized the marks left by the carbon sheets. He set to work
+on another of those painstaking tasks of examination, and I retired to
+my typewriter, which I had moved into the next room, in order to leave
+Kennedy without anything that might distract attention from his work.
+
+One after another he examined the sheets which he had marked, starting
+with a hand-lens and then using one more powerful. At the top of the
+table lay the specially prepared paper on which he had caught and
+preserved the marks in the dust of the Egyptian sarcophagus in the
+Museum.
+
+Besides these things, I noticed that he had innumerable photographs,
+many of which were labelled with the stamp of the bureau in the Paris
+Palais de Justice, over which Bertillon had presided.
+
+One after another he looked at the carbon prints, comparing them point
+by point with the specially prepared copy of the shoe-prints in the
+sarcophagus. It was, after all, a comparatively simple job. We had the
+prints of de Moche and Lockwood, as well as Whitney, all of them
+crossed by steps from Norton.
+
+"Well, what do you think of that?" I heard him mutter.
+
+I quit my typewriter, with a piece of paper still in it, and hurried
+into the main room.
+
+"Have you found anything?"
+
+"I should say I had," he replied, in a tone that betrayed his own
+astonishment at the find. "Look at that," he indicated to me, handing
+over one of the sheets. "Compare it with this Museum foot-print."
+
+With his pencil Kennedy rapidly indicated the tell-tale points of
+similarity on the two shoe-prints.
+
+I looked up at him, convinced now of some one's identity.
+
+"Who was it?" I asked, unable to restrain myself longer.
+
+Kennedy paused a minute, to let the importance of the surprise be
+understood.
+
+"The man who entered the Museum and concealed himself in the
+sarcophagus in the Egyptian section adjoining Norton's treasures,"
+replied Kennedy slowly, "was Lockwood himself!"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE EVIL EYE
+
+
+Completely at sea as a result of the unexpected revelation of the
+shoe-prints we had found in the Museum, and with suspicions now
+thoroughly aroused against Lockwood, I accompanied Kennedy to keep our
+appointment with the Senorita at the Prince Edward Albert.
+
+We were purposely a bit early, in order to meet Inez, so that she would
+not have to be alone with the Senora, and we sat down in the lobby in a
+little angle from which we could look into the tea room.
+
+We had not been sitting there very long when Kennedy called my
+attention to Whitney, who had just come in. Almost at the same time he
+caught sight of us, and walked over.
+
+"I've been thinking a good deal of your visit to me just now," he
+began, seating himself beside us. "Perhaps I should not have said what
+I did about your friend Norton. But I couldn't help it. I guess you
+know something about that dagger he lost, don't you?"
+
+"I have heard of the 'great fish' and the 'little fish' and the 'curse
+of Mansiche,'" replied Kennedy, "if that is what you mean. Somehow the
+Inca dagger seems to have been mixed up with them."
+
+"Yes--with the peje grande, I believe," went on Whitney.
+
+Beneath his exterior of studied calm I could see that he was very much
+excited. If I had not already noted a peculiar physical condition in
+him, I might have thought he had stopped in the cafe with some friends
+too long. But his eyes were not those of a man who has had too much to
+drink.
+
+Just then Senorita Mendoza entered, and Kennedy rose and went forward
+to greet her. She saw Whitney, and flashed an inquiring glance at us.
+
+"We were waiting for Senorita Mendoza," explained Kennedy to both
+Whitney and her, "when Mr. Whitney happened along. I don't see Senora
+de Moche in the tea room. Perhaps we may as well sit out here in the
+corridor until she comes."
+
+It was evidently his desire to see how Whitney and Inez would act, for
+this was the first time we had ever seen them together.
+
+"We were talking of the treasure," resumed Whitney, omitting to mention
+the dagger. "Kennedy, we are not the only ones who have sought the peje
+grande, or rather are seeking it. But we are, I believe, the only ones
+who are seeking it in the right place, and," he added, leaning over
+confidentially, "your father, Senorita, was the only one who could have
+got the concession, the monopoly, from the government to seek in what I
+am convinced will be the right place. Others have found the 'little
+fish.' We shall find the 'big fish.'"
+
+He had raised his voice from the whisper, and I caught Inez looking
+anxiously at Kennedy, as much as to say, "You see? He is like the rest.
+His mind is full of only one subject."
+
+"We shall find it, too," he continued, still speaking in a high-pitched
+key, "no matter what obstacles man or devil put in our way. It shall be
+ours--for a simple piece of engineering--ours! The curse of
+Mansiche--pouf!"
+
+He snapped his fingers defiantly as he said it. There was an air of
+bravado about his manner. I could not help feeling that perhaps in his
+heart he was not so sure of himself as he would have others think.
+
+I watched him closely, and could see that he had suddenly become even
+more excited than before. It was as though some diabolical force had
+taken possession of his brain, and he fought it off, but was unable to
+conquer.
+
+Kennedy followed the staring glance of Whitney's eyes, which seemed
+almost to pop out of his head, as though he were suffering from the
+disease exophthalmic goitre. I looked also. Senora de Moche had come
+from the elevator, accompanied by Alfonso, and was walking slowly down
+the corridor. As she looked to the right and left, she had caught sight
+of our little group, all except Whitney, with our backs toward her. She
+was now looking fixedly in our direction, paying no attention to
+anything else.
+
+Whitney was a study. I wondered what could be the relations between
+these two, the frankly voluptuous woman and the calculating
+full-blooded man. Whitney, for his part, seemed almost fascinated by
+her gaze. He rose as she bowed, and, for a moment, I thought that he
+was going over to speak to her, as if drawn by that intangible
+attraction which Poe has so cleverly expressed in his "Imp of the
+Perverse." For, clearly, one who talked as Whitney had just been
+talking would have to be on his guard with that woman. Instead,
+however, he returned her nod and stood still, while Kennedy bowed at a
+distance and signalled to her that we would be in the tea room directly.
+
+I glanced up in time to see the anxious look on the face of Inez change
+momentarily into a flash of hatred toward the Senora.
+
+At the same moment Alfonso, who was on the other side of his mother,
+turned from looking at a newsstand which had attracted his attention
+and caught sight of us. There was no mistaking the ardent glance which
+he directed at the fair Peruvian at my side. I fancied, too, that her
+face softened a bit. It was only for a moment, and then Inez resumed
+her normal composure.
+
+"I won't detain you any longer," remarked Whitney. "Somehow, when I
+start to talk about my--our plans down there at Truxillo I could go on
+all night. It is marvellous, marvellous. We haven't any idea of what
+the future holds in store. No one else in all this big city has
+anything like the prospect which is before us. Gradually we are getting
+everything into shape. When we are ready to go ahead, it will be the
+sensation of Wall Street--and, believe me, it takes much to arouse the
+Street."
+
+He may have been talking wildly, but it was worth while to listen to
+him. For, whatever else he was, Whitney was one of the most persuasive
+promoters of the day. More than that, I could well imagine how any one
+possessed of an imagination susceptible to the influence of mystery and
+tradition would succumb to the glittering charm of the magic words,
+peje chica, and feel all the gold-hunter's enthusiasm when Whitney
+brought him into the atmosphere of the peje grande. As he talked,
+visions of hidden treasure seemed to throw a glamour over everything.
+One saw golden.
+
+"You will excuse us?" apologized Kennedy, taking Inez by the arm. "If
+you are about, Mr. Whitney, I shall stop to chat with you again on the
+way out."
+
+"Remember--she is a very remarkable woman," said Whitney, as we left
+him and started for the tea room.
+
+His tone was not exactly one of warning, yet it seemed to have cost him
+an effort to say it. I could not reconcile it with any other idea than
+that he was trying to use her in his own plans, but was still in doubt
+of the outcome.
+
+We parted from him and entered the darkened tea room, with its wicker
+tables and chairs, and soft lights, glowing pinkly, to simulate night
+in the broad light of afternoon outside. A fountain splashed soothingly
+in the centre. Everything was done to lend to the place an exotic air
+of romance.
+
+Alfonso and his mother had chosen a far corner, deeper than the rest in
+the shadows, where two wicker settees were drawn up about a table,
+effectually cutting off inquisitive eyes and ears.
+
+Alfonso rose as we approached and bowed deeply. I could not help
+watching the two women as they greeted each other.
+
+"Won't you be seated?" he asked, pulling around one of the wicker
+chairs.
+
+It was then that I saw how he had contrived to sit next to Inez, while
+Kennedy manoeuvred to sit on the end, where he could observe them all
+best.
+
+It was a rather delicate situation, and I wondered how Kennedy would
+handle it, for, although Alfonso had done the inviting, it was really
+Craig who was responsible for allowing Inez to accept. The Senora
+seemed to recognize it, also, for, although she talked to Inez, it was
+plain she had him in mind.
+
+"I have heard from Alfonso about the cruel death of your father," she
+began, in a softened tone, "and I haven't had a chance to tell you how
+deeply I sympathize with you. Of course, I am a much older woman than
+you, have seen much more trouble. But I know that never in life do
+troubles seem keener than when life is young. And yours has been so
+harsh. I could not let it pass without an opportunity to tell you how
+deeply I feel."
+
+She said it with an air of sincerity that was very convincing, so
+convincing, in fact, that it shook for the moment the long chain of
+suspicion that I had been forging both of her and her son. Could she be
+such a heartless woman as to play on the very heartstrings of one whom
+she had wronged? I was shaken, moreover, by the late discovery by
+Kennedy of the foot-prints.
+
+The Senorita murmured her thanks for the condolences in a broken voice.
+It was evident that whatever enmity she bore against the Senora it was
+not that of suspicion that she was the cause of her father's death.
+
+"I can sympathize with you the more deeply," she went on, "because only
+lately I have lost a very dear brother myself. Already I have told
+Professor Kennedy something about it. It was a matter of which I felt I
+must speak to you, for it may concern you, in the venture in which Mr.
+Lockwood and your father were associated, and into which now Mr.
+Whitney has entered."
+
+Inez said nothing, and Craig bowed, as though he, too, wished her to go
+on.
+
+"It is about the 'big fish' and the concession which your father has
+obtained from the government to search for it."
+
+The Senorita started and grew a bit pale at the reference, but she
+seemed to realize that it was something she ought to hear, and steeled
+herself to it.
+
+"Yes," she murmured, "I understand."
+
+"As you no doubt know," resumed the Senora, "no one has had the secret
+of the hiding-place. It has been by mere tradition that they were going
+to dig. That secret, you may know or may not know now, was in reality
+contained in the inscriptions on an old Inca dagger."
+
+Inez shuddered at the mention of the weapon, a shudder that was not
+lost on the Senora.
+
+"I have already told Professor Kennedy that both the tradition and the
+dagger were handed down in my own family, coming at last to my brother.
+As I said, I don't know how it happened, but somehow he seemed to be
+getting crazy, until he talked, and the dagger was stolen from him. It
+came finally into Professor Norton's hands, from whom it was in turn
+stolen."
+
+She looked at Inez searchingly, as if to discover just what she knew. I
+wondered whether the Senora suspected the presence of Lockwood's
+footprints in the sarcophagus in the Museum--what she would do if she
+did.
+
+"After he lost it," she continued reminiscently, "my brother threw
+himself one day into Lake Titicaca. Everywhere the trail of that
+dagger, of the secret of the Gold of the Gods has been stained by
+blood. To-day the world scoffs at curses. But surely that gold must be
+cursed. It has been cursed for us and ours."
+
+She spoke bitterly; yet might she not mean that the loss of the dagger,
+the secret, was a curse, too?
+
+"There is one other thing I wish to say, and then I will be through.
+Far back, when your ancestors came into the country of mine, an
+ancestor of your father lost his life over the treasure. It seems as if
+there were a strange fatality over it, as if the events of to-day were
+but living over the events of yesterday. It is something that we cannot
+escape--fate."
+
+She paused a moment, then added, "Yet it might be possible that the
+curse could be removed if somehow we, who were against each other then,
+might forget and be for each other now."
+
+"But Senorita Mendoza has not the dagger," put in Kennedy, watching her
+face keenly, to read the effect of his remark. "She has no idea where
+it may be."
+
+"Then it is pure tradition on which Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Whitney depend
+in their search for the treasure?" flashed back the Senora quickly.
+
+Kennedy did not know, but he did not confess it. "Until we know
+differently, we must take their word for it," he evaded.
+
+"It was not that that I meant, however," replied Senora de Moche. "I
+meant that we might stop the curse by ceasing to hunt for the treasure.
+It has never done any one good; it never will. Why tempt fate, then?
+Why not pause before it is too late?"
+
+I could not quite catch the secondary implication of her plan. Did it
+mean that the treasure would then be left for her family? Or was she
+hinting at Inez accepting Alfonso's suit? Somehow I could not take the
+Senora at her face value. I constantly felt that there was an ulterior
+motive back of her actions and words.
+
+I saw Craig watching the young man's face, and followed his eyes. There
+was no doubt of how he took the remark. He was gazing ardently at Inez.
+If there had ever been any doubt of his feelings, which, of course,
+there had not, this would have settled it.
+
+"One thing more," added the Senora, as though she had had an
+afterthought, "and that is about Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Whitney. Let me
+ask you to think it over. Suppose they have not the dagger. Then are
+their chances better than others? And if they have"--she paused to
+emphasize it--"what does that mean?"
+
+Kennedy had turned his attention to the Senorita. It was evident that
+the dilemma proposed by de Moche was not without weight. She had now
+coloured a flaming red. The woman had struck her in a vital spot.
+
+"Mr. Lockwood is not here to defend himself," Inez said quietly. "I
+will not have him attacked by innuendo."
+
+She had risen. Neither the ardour of Alfonso nor the seeds of doubt of
+the Senora had shaken her faith. It was a test that Kennedy evidently
+was glad to have witnessed. For some day she might learn the truth
+about the foot-prints. He understood her character better. The Senora,
+too, had learned that if she were to bring pressure on the girl she
+might break her, but she would not bend.
+
+Without another word Inez, scarcely bowing stiffly, moved out of the
+tea room, and we followed, leaving the mother and son there, baffled.
+
+"I hope you will pardon me for allowing you to come here," said
+Kennedy, in a low voice. "I did it because there are certain things
+that you ought to hear. It was in fairness to you. I would not have you
+delude yourself about Mr. Whitney, about--Mr. Lockwood, even. I want
+you to feel that, no matter what you hear or see, you can come to me
+and know that I will tell you the truth. It may hurt, but it will be
+best."
+
+I thought he was preparing the way for a revelation about the
+foot-prints, but he said nothing more.
+
+"Oh, that woman!" she exclaimed, as if to change the subject. "I do not
+know, I cannot say, why she affects me so. I saw a change in my father,
+when he knew her. I have told you how he was, how sometimes I thought
+he was mad. Did you notice a change in Mr. Whitney, or haven't you
+known him long enough? And lately I have fancied that I see the same
+sort of change beginning in Mr. Lockwood. At times they become so
+excited, their eyes seem staring, as if some fever were wasting them
+away. Father seemed to see strange visions, and hear voices, was worse
+when he was alone than when he was in a crowd. Oh, what is it? I could
+think of nothing else, not even what she was saying, all the time I was
+with her."
+
+"Then you fear that in some way she may be connected with these strange
+changes?" asked Kennedy.
+
+"I don't know," she temporized; but the tone of her answer was
+sufficient to convey the impression that in her heart she did suspect
+something, she knew not what.
+
+"Oh, Professor Kennedy," she cried finally, "can't you see it?
+Sometimes--when she looks out of those eyes of hers--she almost makes
+people do as she pleases."
+
+We had come to the taxicab stand before the hotel, and Kennedy had
+already beckoned to a cab to take her home.
+
+As he handed her in she turned with a little shiver.
+
+"Don't please, think me foolish," she added, with bated breath, "but
+often I fear that it is, as we call it, the mal de ojo--the evil eye!"
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE POISONED CIGARETTE
+
+
+There was not a grain of superstition in Kennedy, yet I could see that
+he was pondering deeply what Inez Mendoza had just said. Was it
+possible that there might be something in it--not objectively, but
+subjectively? Might that very fear which the Senorita had of the Senora
+engender a feeling that would produce the very result that she feared?
+I knew that there were strange things that modern psychology was
+discovering. Could there be some scientific explanation of the evil eye?
+
+Kennedy turned and went back into the hotel, to keep his appointment
+with Whitney, and as he did so I reflected that, whatever credence
+might be given the evil-eye theory, there was something now before us
+that was a fact--the physical condition which Inez had observed in her
+father before his death, saw now in Whitney, and foresaw in Lockwood.
+Surely that in itself constituted enough of a problem.
+
+We found Whitney in the cafe, sitting alone in a leather-cushioned
+booth, and smoking furiously. I observed him narrowly. His eyes had
+even more than before that peculiar, staring look. By the manner in
+which his veins stood out I could see that his heart action must be
+very rapid.
+
+"Well," he remarked, as we seated ourselves, "how did you come out in
+your tete-a-tete?"
+
+"About as I expected," answered Kennedy nonchalantly. "I let it go on
+merely because I wanted Senorita Mendoza to hear certain things, and I
+thought that the Senora could tell them best. One of them related to
+the history of that dagger."
+
+I thought Whitney's eyes would pop out of his head. "What about it?" he
+asked.
+
+"Well," replied Kennedy briefly, "there was the story of how her
+brother had it and was driven crazy until he gave it up to somebody,
+then committed suicide by throwing himself into Titicaca. The other was
+the tradition that in the days after Pizarro a Mendoza was murdered by
+it, just as her father has now been murdered."
+
+Whitney was listening intently, and seemed to be thinking deeply of
+something.
+
+"Do you know," he said finally, with a nod to indicate that he knew
+what it was that Kennedy referred to, "I've been thinking of that de
+Moche woman a good deal since I left you with her. I've had some
+dealings with her."
+
+He looked at Kennedy shrewdly, as though he would have liked to ask
+whether she had said anything about him, but did not because he knew
+Kennedy would not tell. He was trying to figure out some other way of
+finding out.
+
+"Sometimes I think she is trying to double-cross me," he said, at
+length. "I know that when she talks to others about me she says many
+things that aren't so. Yet when she is with me everything is fine, and
+she is ready soon to join us, use her influence with influential
+Peruvians; in fact, there isn't anything she won't do--manana,
+to-morrow."
+
+All that Whitney said we now knew to be true.
+
+"She has one interesting dilemma, however, which I do not mind telling
+you," remarked Kennedy at length. "She cannot expect me to keep secret
+what she said before all of us. Inez Mendoza would mention it, anyhow."
+
+"What was that?" queried Whitney, dissembling his interest.
+
+"Why," replied Kennedy slowly, "it was that, with the plans for digging
+for the treasure which you say you have, suppose you and Lockwood and
+your associates have not the dagger--how are you better off than
+previous hunters? And supposing you have it--what does that imply?"
+
+Whitney thought a moment over the last proposition of the dilemma.
+"Imply?" he repeated slowly. Then the significance of it seemed to dawn
+on him, the possession of the dagger and its implication in regard to
+the murder of Mendoza. "Well," he answered, "we haven't the dagger. You
+know that. But, on the other hand, we think our plans for getting at
+the treasure are better than any one else has ever had, more certain of
+success."
+
+"Yet the possession of the dagger, with its inscription, is the only
+thing that absolutely insures success," observed Kennedy.
+
+"That's true enough," agreed Whitney. "Confound that man Norton. How
+could he be such a boob as to let the chance slip through his fingers?"
+
+"He never told you of it?" asked Kennedy.
+
+"Yes, he told me of the dagger, but hadn't read the inscription, he
+said," answered Whitney. "I was so busy at the time with Lockwood and
+Mendoza, who had the concession to dig for the treasure, that I didn't
+pay much attention to what Norton brought back. I thought that could
+wait until Lockwood had been persuaded to join the interests I
+represent."
+
+"Did Lockwood or Mendoza know about the dagger and its importance?"
+suggested Craig.
+
+"If they did, they never said anything about it," returned Whitney
+promptly. "Mendoza is dead. Lockwood tells me he knew nothing about it
+until very lately--since the murder, I suppose."
+
+"You suppose?" persisted Kennedy. "Are you sure that he knew nothing
+about it before?"
+
+"No," confessed Whitney, "I'm not sure. Only I say that he told me
+nothing of it."
+
+"Then he might have known?"
+
+"Might have. But I don't think it very probable."
+
+Whitney seemed to be turning something over in his mind. Suddenly he
+brought his fist down on the little round table before us, rattling the
+glasses.
+
+"Do you know," he exclaimed, "the more I think about it, the more
+convinced I am that Norton ought to be held to account for that loss!
+He ought to have known. Then the presumption is that he did know. By
+heaven, I'm going to have that fellow watched. I'm going to do it
+to-day, too. I don't trust him. He shall not double-cross me--even if
+that woman does!"
+
+I wondered whether Whitney was bluffing. If he was, he was making a lot
+of fuss over it. He talked more and more wildly, as he grew more
+excited over his latest idea.
+
+"I'll have detectives put on his trail," he blustered. "I'll talk it
+over with Lockwood. He never liked the man."
+
+"What did Lockwood say about Norton?" asked Kennedy casually.
+
+Whitney eyed us a moment.
+
+"Say," he ejaculated, "it was Norton brought you into this case, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"I cannot deny that," returned Kennedy quietly, meeting his eyes. "But
+it is Inez Mendoza now that keeps me in it."
+
+"So--you're another rival, are you?" purred Whitney sarcastically.
+"Lockwood and de Moche aren't enough. I have a sneaking suspicion that
+Norton himself is one of them. Now it's you, too. I suppose Mr. Jameson
+is another. Well, if I was ten years younger, I'd cut you all out, or
+know the reason why. Oh, YES, I think I will NOT tell you what Mr.
+Lockwood suspects."
+
+With every sentence the veins of Whitney's forehead stood out further,
+until now they were like whipcords. His eyes and face were fairly
+apoplectic. Slowly the conviction was forced on me. The man acted for
+all the world like one affected by a drug.
+
+"Well," he went on, "you may tell Norton for me that I am going to have
+him watched. That will throw a scare into him."
+
+At least it showed that the breach between Whitney and Norton was deep.
+Kennedy listened without saying much, but I knew that he was gratified.
+He was playing Lockwood against de Moche, the Senora against Inez. Now
+if Whitney would play himself against Norton, out of the tangle might
+emerge just the clues he needed. For when people get fighting among
+themselves the truth comes out.
+
+"Very well," remarked Craig, rising, with a hurried glance at Whitney's
+apoplectic face, "go as far as you like. I think we understand each
+other better, now."
+
+Whitney said nothing, but, rising also, turned on his heel and walked
+deliberately out of the cafe into the corridor of the Prince Edward
+Albert, leaving us standing there.
+
+Kennedy leaned over and swept up the ashes of Whitney's cigarettes
+which lay in the ash-tray, placing them, stubs and all, in an envelope,
+as he had done before.
+
+"We have one sample, already," he said. "Another won't hurt. You can
+never have too much material to work with. Let us see where he is
+going."
+
+Slowly we followed in the direction which Whitney had taken from the
+cafe. There was Whitney standing by the cigar-stand, gazing intently
+down the corridor.
+
+Kennedy and I moved over so that we could see what he was gazing at.
+Just then he started to walk hurriedly in the direction in which he was
+looking.
+
+"Senora de Moche!" exclaimed Craig, drawing me toward a palm.
+
+It was indeed she. She had left the tea room and gone to her own room.
+Now she was alighting from the elevator, and had started toward the
+main dining-room, when her eyes had rested on Whitney. In spite of all
+that he had said to us about her, he had received the glance as a
+signal and was fluttering over to her like a moth to a flame.
+
+What was the reason back of it all, I asked, as I thought of those
+wonderful eyes of hers? Was it a sort of auto-hypnotism? There was, I
+knew, a form of illusion known as ophthalmophobia--fear of the eye. It
+ranged from mere aversion at being gazed at all the way to the
+subjective development of real physical action from an otherwise
+trivial objective cause. Perhaps Inez was right about the eyes. One
+might fear them, and that fear might cause the precise thing to happen
+which the owner of the eyes intended. Still, as I reflected before,
+there was a much more important problem regarding eyes before us, that
+of the drug that was evidently being used in the cigarettes. What was
+it?
+
+There was no chance of our gleaning anything now from these two who
+made such a strange pair. Kennedy turned and went out of the nearest
+entrance of the hotel.
+
+"Central Park, West," he directed a cab driver, as we climbed in his
+machine; then to me, after giving the number, "I must see Inez Mendoza
+again before I can go ahead."
+
+Inez was not expecting us so soon after leaving her at the hotel, yet I
+think was just a little glad that we had come.
+
+"Did anything happen after I left?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"We went back and saw Mr. Whitney," returned Craig. "I believe you are
+right. He is acting queerly."
+
+"Alfonso called me up," she volunteered.
+
+"Was it about anything I should know?" queried Craig.
+
+"Well," she hesitated, "he said he hoped that nothing that had taken
+place would change our own relations. That was about all. He was the
+dutiful son, and made no attempt to explain anything that was said."
+
+Kennedy smiled. "You have not seen Mr. Lockwood since, I suppose?" he
+asked.
+
+"You always make me tell what I hadn't intended," she confessed,
+smiling back. "Yes, I couldn't help it. At least, I didn't see him. I
+called him up. I wanted to tell him what she had said and that it
+hadn't made any difference to me."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"I can't remember just how he put it, but I think he meant that it was
+something very much like that anonymous letter I received. We both feel
+that there is some one who wants to make trouble between us, and we are
+not going to let it happen."
+
+If she had known of Kennedy's discovery of the shoe-prints, I feel sure
+that, as far as we were concerned, the case would have ended there. She
+was in no mood to be convinced by such a thing, would probably have
+insisted that some one was wearing a second-hand pair of his shoes.
+
+Kennedy's eye had been travelling around the room as though searching
+for something.
+
+"May I have a cigarette out of that case over there?" he asked,
+indicating a box of them on a table.
+
+"Why--that is Mr. Lockwood's," she replied. "He left it here the last
+time he was here and I forgot to send it to him. Wait a minute. Let me
+get you some of father's."
+
+She left the room. The moment the door closed Kennedy reached over and
+took one from the case. "I have some of Lockwood's already, but another
+won't matter, as long as I can get it," he said. "I thought it was her
+father's. When she brings them, smoke one with me, and be careful to
+save the stub. I want it."
+
+A moment later she entered with a metal box that must have held several
+hundred. Kennedy and I each took one and lighted it, then for several
+minutes chatted as an excuse for staying. As for myself, I was glad
+enough to leave a pretty large stub, for I did not like it. These
+cigarettes, like those Whitney had offered us, had a peculiar flavour
+which I had not acquired a liking for.
+
+"You must let me know whether anything else develops from the meeting
+in the tea room," said Kennedy finally, rising. "I shall be at the
+laboratory some time, I think."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE INTERFEROMETER
+
+
+Norton was waiting for us at the laboratory when we returned, evidently
+having been there some time.
+
+"I was on my way to my apartment," he began, "when I thought I'd drop
+in to see how things are progressing."
+
+"Slowly," returned Kennedy, throwing off his street clothes and getting
+into his laboratory togs.
+
+"Have you seen Whitney since I had the break with him?" asked Norton, a
+trifle anxiously.
+
+I wondered whether Kennedy would tell Norton what to expect from
+Whitney. He did not, however.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "just now we had an appointment with Senora de Moche
+and some others and ran into him at the hotel for a few moments."
+
+"What did he say about me?" queried Norton.
+
+"He hadn't changed his mind," evaded Kennedy. "Have you heard anything
+from him?"
+
+"Not a syllable. The break is final. Only I was wondering what he was
+telling people about me. He'll tell them something--his side of the
+case."
+
+"Well," considered Kennedy, as though racking his brain for some remark
+which he remembered, while Norton watched him eagerly, "I do recall
+that he was terribly sore about the loss of the dagger, and seemed to
+think that it was your fault."
+
+"I thought so, I knew it," replied Norton bitterly. "I can see it
+coming. All the trustees will hear of my gross negligence in letting
+the Museum be robbed. I suppose I ought to sit up there all night. Oh,
+by the way, there's another thing I wanted to ask you. Have you ever
+done anything with those shoe-prints you found in the dust of the mummy
+case?"
+
+I glanced at Kennedy, wondering whether he felt that the time had come
+to reveal what he had discovered. He said nothing for a moment, but
+reached into a drawer and pulled out the papers, which I recognized.
+
+"Here they are," he said, picking out the original impression which he
+had taken.
+
+"Yes," repeated Norton, "but have you been able to do anything toward
+identifying them?"
+
+"I found it rather hard to collect prints of the shoes of all of those
+I wished to compare. But I have them at last."
+
+"And?" demanded Norton, leaning forward tensely.
+
+"I find that there is one person whose shoe-prints are precisely the
+same as those we found in the Museum," went on Kennedy, tossing over
+the impression he had taken.
+
+Norton scanned the two carefully. "I'm not a criminologist," he said
+excitedly, "but to my untrained eye it does seem as though you had here
+a replica of the first prints, all right." He laid them down and looked
+squarely at Kennedy. "Do you mind telling me whose feet made these
+prints?"
+
+"Turn the second over. You will see the name written on it."
+
+"Lockwood!" exclaimed Norton in a gasp as he read the name. "No--you
+don't mean it."
+
+"I mean nothing less," repeated Kennedy firmly. "I do not say what
+happened afterwards, but Lockwood was in the Museum, hiding in the
+mummy case, that night."
+
+Norton's mind was evidently working rapidly. "I wish I had your power
+of deduction, Kennedy," he said, at length. "I suppose you realize what
+this means?"
+
+"What does it mean to you?" asked Kennedy, changing front.
+
+Norton hesitated. "Well," he replied, "it means to me, I suppose, what
+it means to any one who stops to think. If Lockwood was there, he got
+the dagger. If he had the dagger--it was he who used it!"
+
+The inference was so strong that Craig could not deny it. Whether it
+was his opinion or not was another matter.
+
+"It fits in with other facts, too," continued Norton. "For instance, it
+was Lockwood who discovered the body of Mendoza."
+
+"But the elevator boy took Lockwood up himself," objected Craig, more
+for the sake of promoting the discussion than to combat Norton.
+
+"Yes--when he 'discovered' the thing. But it must have been done long
+before. Who knows? He may have entered. The deed might have been done.
+He may have left. No one saw him come or go. What then more likely to
+cover himself up than to return when he knew that his entrance would be
+known, and find the thing himself?"
+
+Norton's reasoning was clever and plausible. Yet Kennedy scarcely
+nodded his head, one way or the other.
+
+"You were acquainted with Lockwood?" he asked finally. "I mean to say,
+of course, before this affair."
+
+"Yes, I met him in Lima just as I was starting out on my expedition. He
+was preparing to come to New York."
+
+"What did you think of him then?"
+
+"Oh, he was all right, I suppose. He wasn't the sort who would care
+much for an archaeologist. He cared more for a prospector going off
+into the hills than he did for me. And I--I admit that I am impossible.
+Archaeology is my life."
+
+Norton continued to study the prints. "I can hardly believe my eyes,"
+he murmured; then he looked up suddenly. "Does Whitney know about
+this--or Lockwood?"
+
+Kennedy shook his head negatively.
+
+"Because," pursued Norton, "an added inference to that I spoke of would
+be that the reason why they are so sure that they will find the
+treasure is that they are not going on tradition, as they say, but on
+the fact itself."
+
+"A fair conclusion," agreed Craig.
+
+"I wish the break could have been postponed," continued Norton. "Then I
+might have been of some service in my relation to Whitney. It's too
+late for me to be able to help you in that direction now, however."
+
+"There is something you can do, though," said Craig.
+
+"I shall be delighted," hastened Norton. "What is it?"
+
+"You know Senora de Moche and Alfonso?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I wish that you would cultivate their acquaintance. I feel that they
+are very suspicious of me. Perhaps they may not be so with you."
+
+"Is there any special thing you want to find out?"
+
+"Yes--only I have slight hopes of doing so. You know that she is on
+most intimate terms with Whitney."
+
+"I'm afraid I can't do much for you, then. She'll fight shy of me.
+He'll tell her his story."
+
+"That will make no difference. She has already warned me against him.
+He has warned against her. It's a most remarkable situation. He is
+trying to get her into some kind of deal, yet all the time he is afraid
+she is double-crossing him. And at the same time he obeys her--well,
+like Alfonso would Inez if she'd only let him."
+
+Norton frowned. "I don't like the way they hover about Inez Mendoza,"
+he remarked. "Perhaps the Senora is after Whitney, while her son is
+after Inez. Lockwood seems to be impervious to her. Yes, I'll undertake
+that commission for you, only I can't promise what success I'll have."
+
+Kennedy restored the shoe-prints to the drawer.
+
+"I think that's gratifying progress," went on Norton. "First we know
+who stole the dagger. We know that the dagger killed Mendoza. You have
+even determined what the poison on the blade was. It seems to me that
+it remains only to determine who struck the actual blow. I tell you,
+Kennedy, Whitney will regret the day that he ever threw me over on so
+trivial a pretext."
+
+Norton was pacing up and down excitedly now.
+
+"My only fear is," he went on, "what the shock of such a thing will be
+on that poor little girl. First her father, then Lockwood. Why--the
+blow will be terrible. You must be careful, Kennedy."
+
+"Never fear about that," reassured Craig. "Not a word of this has been
+breathed to her yet. We are a long way from fixing the guilt of the
+murder; inference is one thing, fact another. We must have facts. And
+the facts I want, which you may be able to get, relate to the strange
+actions of the de Moches."
+
+Norton scanned Kennedy's face for some hint of what was back of the
+remark. But there was nothing there.
+
+"They will bear watching, all right," he said, as he rose to go. "Old
+Mendoza was never quite the same after he became so intimate with her.
+And I think I can see a change in Whitney."
+
+"What do you attribute it to?" asked Kennedy, without admitting that it
+had attracted his attention, too.
+
+"I haven't the slightest idea," confessed Norton.
+
+"Inez is as afraid of her as any of the rest," remarked Kennedy
+thoughtfully. "She says it is the evil eye."
+
+"Not an uncommon belief among Latin-Americans," commented Norton. "In
+fact, I suppose there are people among us who believe in the evil eye
+yet. Still, you can hardly blame that little girl for believing it is
+almost anything. Well, I won't keep you any longer. I shall let you
+know of anything I find out from the de Moches. I think you are getting
+on remarkably."
+
+Norton left us, his face much brighter than it had been when we met him
+at the door.
+
+Kennedy, alone at last in the laboratory, went over to a cabinet and
+took out a peculiar-looking apparatus, which seemed, as nearly as I can
+describe it, to consist of a sort of triangular prism, set with its
+edge vertically on a rigid platform attached to a massive stand of
+brass.
+
+"Norton seems to have suddenly become quite solicitous of the welfare
+of Senorita Mendoza," I hazarded, as he worked over the adjustment of
+the thing.
+
+Kennedy smiled. "Every one seems to be--even Whitney," he returned,
+twisting a set-screw until he had the alignment of the various parts as
+he wanted it.
+
+The telephone bell rang.
+
+"Do you want to answer it?" I asked Craig.
+
+"No," he replied, not even looking up from his work. "Find out who it
+is. Unless it is something very important say I am out on an
+investigation and that you have heard from me; that I shall not be
+either at the laboratory or the apartment until tomorrow morning. I
+must get this done to-night."
+
+I took down the receiver.
+
+"Hello, is this Professor Kennedy?" I recognized a voice.
+
+"No," I replied. "Is there any message I can take?"
+
+"This is Mr. Lockwood," came back the information I had already
+guessed. "When do you expect him?"
+
+"It's Lockwood," I whispered to Craig, my hand over the transmitter.
+
+"See what he wants," returned Craig. "Tell him what I told you."
+
+I repeated Kennedy's message.
+
+"Well, that's too bad," replied Lockwood. "I've just seen Mr. Whitney,
+and he tells me that Kennedy and you are pretty friendly with Norton,
+Of course, I knew that. I saw you at the Mendozas' together the first
+time. I'd like to have a talk with him about that man. I suppose he has
+told you all his side of the story of his relations with Whitney."
+
+I am, if anything, a good listener, and so I said nothing, not even
+that he had better tell it to Kennedy in the morning, for it was such a
+novelty to have any of these people talk voluntarily that I really
+didn't much care whether I believed what they said or not.
+
+"I used to know him down in Lima, you know," went on Lockwood. "What I
+want to say has to do with that dagger he says was stolen. I want to
+tell what I know of how he got it. There was an Indian mixed up in it
+who committed suicide--well, you tell Kennedy I'll see him in the
+morning."
+
+Lockwood rang off, and I repeated what he had told me, as Kennedy
+continued to adjust the apparatus.
+
+"Say," I exclaimed, as I finished. "That was a harry's of a commission
+you gave Norton just now, watching the de Moches. Why, they'd eat him
+alive if they got a chance, and I don't know that all's like a Sunday
+school on his part. Lockwood doesn't seem to think so."
+
+Kennedy smiled quietly. "That was why I asked him to do it," he
+returned. "I thought that he wouldn't let much escape him. They all
+seem so down on him, he'll have to watch out. It will keep him busy,
+too, and that means a chance for us to work."
+
+He had finished setting up the machine, and now went over to another
+drawer, from which he took the envelope of stubs which we had taken
+down at Whitney's office first. Then from the pocket of his street coat
+he drew both the second envelope of ashes and stubs, the whole
+cigarette from Lockwood's case, and the stubs which both of us had
+saved from the cigarettes that had once belonged to Mendoza.
+
+Carefully he separated and labelled them all, so that there would be no
+chance for them to get mixed up. Then he picked up one of the stubs and
+lighted it. The smoke curled up in wreaths between a powerful light and
+the peculiar instrument, while Craig peered through a lens,
+manipulating the thing with exhaustless patience and skill. I watched
+him curiously, but said nothing, for he was studying something
+carefully, and I did not want to interrupt his train of thought.
+
+Finally he beckoned me over. "Can you make anything out of that?" he
+asked.
+
+I looked through the eye-piece, also. On a sort of fine grating all I
+could see was a number of strange lines.
+
+"If you want an opinion from me," I said, with a laugh, "you'll have to
+tell me first what I am looking at."
+
+"That," he explained, as I continued to gaze, "is one of the latest
+forms of the spectroscope, known as the interferometer, with delicately
+ruled gratings in which power to resolve the straight, close lines in
+the spectrum is carried to the limit of possibility. A small watch is
+delicate. But it bears no comparison to the delicacy of these
+defraction spectroscopes.
+
+"Every substance, you know, is, when radiating light, characterized by
+what at first appears to be almost haphazard sets of spectral bands
+without relation to one another. But they are related by mathematical
+laws, and the apparent haphazard character is only the result of our
+lack of knowledge of how to interpret the results."
+
+He resumed his place at the eye-piece to check over his results.
+
+"Walter," he said finally, looking up at me with a twinkle in his eye,
+"I wish that you'd go out and find me a cat."
+
+"A cat?" I repeated.
+
+"Yes, a cat--felis domesticus, if it sounds better that way--a plain,
+ordinary cat."
+
+I jammed on my hat and, late as it was, sallied forth on this
+apparently ridiculous mission.
+
+Several belated passers-by and a policeman watched me as though I were
+a house-breaker, and I felt like a fool, but at last, by perseverance
+and tact, I managed to capture a fairly good specimen of the species,
+and carried it in my arms to the laboratory with some profanity and
+many scratches.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE WEED OF MADNESS
+
+
+In my absence Craig had set to work on a peculiar apparatus, as though
+he were distilling something from several of the cigarette stubs which
+he had been studying by means of the interferometer.
+
+"Here's your confounded cat," I ejaculated, as I placed the unhappy
+feline in a basket and waited patiently until finally he seemed to be
+rewarded for his patient labours. It was well along toward morning when
+he obtained in a test-tube a few drops of a colourless, odourless
+liquid.
+
+"My interferometer gave me a clue," he remarked, as he held the tube up
+with satisfaction. "Without the tell-tale line in the spectrum which I
+was able to discover by its use I might have been hunting yet for it.
+It is so rare that no one would ever have thought, offhand, I suppose,
+to look for it. But here it is, I'm sure, only I wanted to be able to
+test it."
+
+"So you are not going to try it on yourself," I said sarcastically,
+referring to his last experiment with a poison. "This time you are
+going to make the cat the dog."
+
+"The cat will be better to test it on than a human being," he replied,
+with a glance that made me wince, for, after his performance with the
+curare, I felt that once the scientific furore was on him I might be
+called upon to become an unwilling martyr to science.
+
+It was with an air of relief, both for himself and my own peace and
+safety, that I saw him take the cat out of the basket and hold her in
+his arms, smoothing her fur gently, to quiet the feelings that I had
+severely ruffled.
+
+Then with a dropper he sucked up a bit of the liquid from the
+test-tube. I watched him intently as he let a small drop fall into the
+eye of the cat.
+
+The cat blinked a moment, and I bent over to observe it more closely.
+
+"It won't hurt the cat," he explained, "and it may help us."
+
+As I looked at the cat's eye it seemed to enlarge, even under the glare
+of a light, shining forth, as it were, like the proverbial cat's eye
+under a bed.
+
+What did it mean?
+
+Was there such a thing, I wondered hastily, as the drug of the evil eye?
+
+"What have you found?" I queried.
+
+"Something very much like the so-called 'weed of madness,' I think," he
+replied slowly.
+
+"The weed of madness?" I repeated.
+
+"Yes. It is similar to the Mexican toloache and the Hindu datura, which
+you must have heard about."
+
+I had heard of these weird drugs, but they had always seemed to be so
+far away and to belong rather to the atmosphere of civilizations
+different from New York. Yet, I reflected, what was to prevent the
+appearance of anything in such a cosmopolitan city, especially in a
+case so unusual as that which had so far baffled even Kennedy's skill?
+
+"You know the jimson weed--the Jamestown weed, as it is so often
+called?" he continued, explaining. "It grows almost everywhere in the
+world, but most thrivingly in the tropics. All the poisons that I have
+mentioned are related to it in some way, I believe."
+
+"I've seen the thing in lots and fields," I replied, "but I never
+thought it was of much importance."
+
+"Well," he resumed, "the jimson weed on the Pacific coast, in some
+parts of the Andes, has large white flowers which exhale a faint,
+repulsive odour. It is a harmless-looking plant, with its thick tangle
+of leaves, a coarse green growth, with trumpet-shaped flowers. But to
+one who knows its properties it is quite too dangerously convenient for
+safety."
+
+"But what has that to do with the evil eye?" I asked.
+
+"Nothing; but it has much to do with the cigarettes that Whitney is
+smoking," he went on positively. "Those cigarettes have been doped!"
+
+"Doped?" I interrogated, in surprise. "With this weed of madness, as
+you call it?"
+
+"No, it isn't toloache that was used," he corrected. "I think it must
+be some particularly virulent variety of the jimson weed that was used,
+though that same weed in Mexico is, I am sure, what there they call
+toloache. Perhaps its virulence in this case lies in the method of
+concentration in preparing it. For instance, the seeds of the
+stramonium, which is the same thing, contain a much higher percentage
+of poison than the leaves and flowers. Perhaps the seeds were used. I
+can't say. But, then, that isn't at all necessary. It is the fact of
+its use that concerns us most now."
+
+He took a drop of the liquid which he had isolated and added a drop of
+nitric acid. Then he evaporated it by gentle heat and it left a residue
+slightly yellow.
+
+Next he took from the shelf over his table a bottle marked "Alcoholic
+Solution--Potassium Hydrate." He opened it and let a drop fall on the
+place where the liquid had evaporated.
+
+Instantly the residue became a beautiful purple, turning rapidly to
+violet, then to dark red, and, finally, it disappeared altogether.
+
+"Stramonium, all right," he nodded, with satisfaction at the
+achievement of his night's labours. "That was known as Vitali's test.
+Yes, there was stramonium in those cigarettes--datura
+stramonium--perhaps a trace of hyoscyamine."
+
+I tried to look wise, but all I could think of was that, whatever his
+science showed me now, my instinct had been enough to prompt me not to
+smoke those cigarettes, though, of course, only Kennedy's science could
+tell what it was that caused that instinctive aversion.
+
+"They are all like atropine, mydriatic alkaloids," he proceeded, "so
+called from the effect they have on the eye. Why, one-one hundred
+thousandth of a grain will affect the eye of a cat. You saw how it
+acted on our subject. It is more active in that way than atropine.
+Better yet, you remember how Whitney's eyes looked, how Inez said her
+father stared, and how she feared for Lockwood?"
+
+"I remember," I said, still not able to detach the evil-eye idea quite
+from my mind. "How about the Senora's eyes? What makes them so--well,
+effective?"
+
+"Oh," Craig answered quickly, "her pupils were normal enough. Didn't
+you notice that? It was the difference in Whitney's and the others'
+that first suggested making some tests."
+
+"What is the effect?" I asked, wondering whether it might have
+contributed to the cause of Mendoza's death.
+
+"The concentrated poison which has been used in these cigarettes does
+not kill--at least not outright. It is worse than that. Slowly it
+accumulates in the system. It acts on the brain."
+
+I was listening, spellbound, as he made his disclosure. No wonder, I
+thought, even a scientific criminal stood in awe of Craig.
+
+"Of all the dangers to be met with in superstitious countries, these
+mydratic alkaloids are among the worst. They offer a chance for crimes
+of the most fiendish nature--worse than with the gun or the stiletto.
+They are worse because there is so little fear of detection. That crime
+is the production of insanity!"
+
+Horrible though the idea, and repulsive, I could not doubt it in the
+face of Craig's investigations and what I had already seen with my own
+eyes. In fact, it was necessary for me only to recall the mild
+sensations I myself had experienced, in order to be convinced of the
+possible effect intended by the insidious poison contained in the many
+cigarettes which Whitney, for instance, had smoked.
+
+"But don't you suppose they know it?" I wondered. "Can't they tell it?"
+
+"I suppose they have gradually become accustomed to it," Craig
+ventured. "If you have ever smoked one particular brand of cigarette
+you must have noticed how the manufacturer can gradually substitute a
+cheaper grade of tobacco without any large number of his patrons
+knowing anything about it. I imagine it might have been done in some
+way like that."
+
+"But you would think they'd feel the effect and attribute it to
+smoking."
+
+"Perhaps they do feel the effect. But when it comes to tracing causes,
+some people are loath to admit that tobacco and liquor can be the root
+of the evil. No, some one is slipping these cigarettes in on them,
+perhaps substituting the doped brand for those that are ordered. If you
+will notice, both Whitney and Lockwood have cigarettes that are made
+especially for them. So had Mendoza. It is a circumstance which some
+one has turned to account, though how and by whom the substitution has
+been made I cannot say yet. I wish I had time to follow out this one
+line, to the exclusion of everything else. But I've got to keep my
+fingers on every rope at once, else the thing will pull away from me.
+It is enough for the present that we know what the poison is. I shall
+take up the tracing of the person who is administering it the moment I
+get a hint."
+
+It was almost daylight before Craig and I left the laboratory after his
+discovery of the manner of the cigarette poisoning by stramonium. But
+that was the only way in which he was able to make progress--taking
+time for each separate point by main force.
+
+I was thoroughly tired, though not so much so that my dreams were not
+haunted by a succession of baleful eyes peering at me from the darkness.
+
+I slept late, but was awakened by a knocking on the door. As I rose to
+answer it I saw through the open door of Kennedy's room that he had
+been about early and must already be at the laboratory. How he did it I
+don't know. My own newspaper experience had made me considerable of a
+nighthawk. But I always paid for it by sleeping the next day. With
+Kennedy, when he was on a case, even five hours of sleep was more than
+he seemed able to stand.
+
+"Hello, Jameson," greeted a voice, as I opened the door. "Is Kennedy
+in--oh, he hasn't come back yet?"
+
+It was Lockwood, at first eager to see Craig, then naturally
+crestfallen because he saw that he was not there.
+
+"Yes," I replied, rubbing my eyes. "He must be at the laboratory. If
+you'll wait a minute while I slip on my clothes, I'll walk over there
+with you."
+
+While I completed my hasty toilet, Lockwood sat in our living room,
+gazing about with fascination at the collection of trophies of the
+chase of criminals.
+
+"This is positively a terrifying array of material, Jameson," he
+declared, as at last I emerged. "Between what Kennedy has here and what
+he has stowed away in that laboratory of his, I wonder that any one
+dares be a crook."
+
+I could not help eying him keenly. Could he have spoken so heartily if
+he had known what it was, damning to himself, that Kennedy had tucked
+away in the laboratory? If he knew, he must have been a splendid actor,
+one of those whom only the minute blood-pressure test of the
+sphygmograph could induce to give up a secret, and then only in spite
+of himself.
+
+"It is wonderful," I agreed. "Are you ready?"
+
+We left the apartment and walked along in the bracing morning air
+toward the campus and the Chemistry Building. Sure enough, as I had
+expected, Kennedy was in his laboratory.
+
+As we entered he was verifying his experiments and checking over his
+results, carefully endeavouring to isolate any of the other closely
+related mydriatic alkaloids that might be contained in the noxious
+fumes of the poisoned tobacco.
+
+Though Craig was already convinced of what was going on, I knew that he
+always considered it a matter of considerable medico-legal importance
+to be exact, for if the affair ever came to the stage of securing an
+indictment the charge could be sustained only by specific proof.
+
+As we appeared in the door, however, he laid aside his work, and
+greeted us.
+
+"I suppose Jameson has already told you that I called you up last
+night--and what I said?" began Lockwood.
+
+Kennedy nodded. "It was something about Norton, wasn't it?"
+
+Lockwood leaned over impressively and almost whispered: "Of course, you
+are in no position to know, but there are ugly rumours current down in
+Lima among the natives regarding that dagger."
+
+Kennedy did not appear to be particularly impressed. "Is that so?" he
+said merely. "What are they?"
+
+"Well," resumed Lockwood, "I wasn't in Lima at the time. I was up here.
+But they tell me that there was something crooked about the way that
+that dagger was got away from an Indian--a brother of Senora de Moche."
+"Yes," replied Kennedy, "I know something about it. He committed
+suicide. But what has that to do with Norton?"
+
+Lockwood hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders. "I should think the
+inference was plain," he insinuated. Then, looking at Craig fixedly, as
+though to take his measure, he added, "We are not out of touch with
+what is going on down there, even if we are several thousand miles
+away."
+
+I wondered whether he had any information more than we had already
+obtained by X-raying the letter to Whitney signed "Haggerty." If he
+had, it was not his purpose, evidently, yet to disclose it. I felt from
+his manner that he was not playing a trump-card, but was just feeling
+us out by this lead.
+
+"There was some crooked business about that dagger down there as well
+as here," he pursued. "There are many interests connected with it.
+Don't you think that it would be worth while watching Norton?" he
+paused, then added: "We do--and we're going to do it."
+
+"Thank you very much," returned Kennedy quietly. "Mr. Whitney has
+already told me he intended to do so."
+
+Lockwood eyed us critically, as though not quite sure what to make of
+the cool manner in which Craig took it.
+
+"I think if I were you," he said at length, "I'd keep a close watch on
+the de Moches, both of them, too."
+
+"Exactly," agreed Craig, without showing undue interest.
+
+Lockwood had risen. "Well," he snapped, "you may not think much of what
+I am telling you now. But just wait until OUR detectives begin to dig
+up facts." No sooner had he left than I turned to Craig. "What was
+that?" I asked. "A plant?"
+
+"Perhaps," he returned, clearing up the materials which he had been
+using.
+
+The telephone rang.
+
+"Hello, Norton," I heard Craig answer. "What's that? You are shadowed
+by some one--you think it is by Whitney?"
+
+I had been expecting something of the sort, and listened attentively,
+but it was impossible to gather the drift of the one-sided conversation.
+
+As Kennedy hung up the receiver I remarked, "So it was not a bluff,
+after all."
+
+"I think my plan is working," he remarked thoughtfully. "You heard what
+he said? He guesses right the first time, that it is Whitney. The last
+thing he said was, 'I'll get even! I'll take some action!' and then he
+rang off. I think we'll hear something soon."
+
+Instead of going out, Kennedy pulled out the several unsigned letters
+we had collected, and began the laborious process of studying the
+printing, analyzing it, in the hope that he might discover some new
+clue.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE EAR IN THE WALL
+
+
+Perhaps an hour later our laboratory door was flung open suddenly, and
+both Kennedy and I leaped to our feet.
+
+There was Inez Mendoza, alone, pale and agitated.
+
+"Tell me, Professor Kennedy," she cried, her hands clasped before her
+in frantic appeal, "tell me--it isn't true--is it? He wasn't
+there--no--no--no!"
+
+She would have fainted if Craig had not sprung forward and caught her
+in time to place her in our only easy-chair.
+
+"Walter," he said, "quick--that bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia
+over there--the second from the left."
+
+I handed it to him, and threw open the window to allow the fresh air to
+blow in. As I did so one of the papers Kennedy had been studying blew
+off the table, and, as luck would have it, fell almost before her. She
+saw it, and in her hypersensitive condition recognized it instantly.
+
+"Oh--that anonymous letter!" she cried. "Tell me--you do not think
+that--the friend of my father's that it warned me to beware of--was--"
+
+She did not finish the sentence. She did not need to do so.
+
+"Please, Senorita," pleaded and soothed Kennedy, "try to be calm. What
+has happened? Tell me. What is it?"
+
+The ammonia and the fresh air seemed to have done their work, for she
+managed to brace herself, gripping the arms of the chair tightly and
+looking up searchingly into Craig's face.
+
+"It's about Chester," she managed to gasp; then seemed unable to go on.
+
+It was the first time I had ever heard her use Lockwood's first name,
+and I knew that something had stirred her emotions more deeply than at
+any time since the death of her father.
+
+"Yes," prompted Kennedy. "Go on."
+
+"I have heard that you found foot-prints, shoe-prints, in the dust in
+the Museum after the dagger was stolen," she said, speaking rapidly,
+suppressing her feelings heroically. "Since then you have been
+collecting prints of shoes--and I've heard that the shoe-prints that
+were found are those of--of Mr. Lockwood. Oh, Professor Kennedy, it
+cannot be--there must be some mistake."
+
+For a moment Kennedy did not say anything. He was evidently seeking
+some way in which to lead up to the revelation of the truth without too
+much shock.
+
+"You remember that time in the tea room when we were sitting with
+Senora de Moche?" he asked finally.
+
+"Yes," she said shortly, as though the very recollection were
+disagreeable to her.
+
+Kennedy, however, had a disagreeable task, and he felt that it must be
+performed in the kindest manner.
+
+"You remember then that she said she had one thing more to say, that it
+was about Mr. Whitney and Mr. Lockwood."
+
+She was about to interrupt, but he hurried on, giving her no chance to
+do so. "She asked you to think it over. Suppose they did not have the
+dagger, she said. Then were their chances of finding the treasure any
+better than any one else had? And if they did have it, she asked what
+that meant. It is a dilemma, my dear Senorita, which you must meet some
+time. Why not meet it now?"
+
+Her face was set. "You will remember, also, Professor Kennedy," she
+said, with a great effort controlling her voice, "that I said that Mr.
+Lockwood was not there to defend himself and I would not have him
+attacked by innuendo. I meant it to the Senora--I mean it to you!"
+
+She had also meant it to defy him; but as she proceeded her voice
+broke, and before she knew it her nature had triumphed, and she was
+alternately sobbing and pleading.
+
+For a minute or two Kennedy let her give vent to her emotions.
+
+"It cannot be. It cannot be," she sobbed over and over. "He could not
+have been there. He could not have done it."
+
+It was a terrible thing to have to disillusion her, but it was
+something now that had to be done. Kennedy had not sought to do so. He
+had postponed it in the hope of finding some other way. But now the
+thing was forced upon him.
+
+"Who told you?" he asked finally.
+
+"I was trying to read, to keep my mind occupied, as you asked me, when
+Juanita told me that there was some one in the living room who wanted
+to see me--a man. I thought it was either you or Mr. Jameson. But it
+was--Professor Norton--"
+
+Kennedy and I exchanged glances. That was the action in revenge to
+Lockwood and Whitney which he had contemplated over the telephone. It
+was so cruel and harsh that I could have hated him for it, the more so
+as I recollected that it was he himself who had cautioned us against
+doing the very thing which now he had done in the heat of passion.
+
+"Oh," she wailed, "he was very kind and considerate about it. He said
+he felt that it was his duty to tell me, that he would be anything,
+like an older brother, to me; that he could not see me blinded any
+longer to what was going on, and everybody knew, but had not love
+enough for me to tell. It was such a shock. I could not even speak. I
+simply ran from the room without another word to him, and Juanita found
+me lying on the bed. Then--I decided--I would come to you."
+
+She paused, and her great, deep eyes looked up pathetically. "And you,"
+she added bitterly, "you are going to tell me that he was right, that
+it is true. You can't prove it. Show me what it is that you have. I
+defy you!"
+
+Somehow, as she rested and relieved her feelings, a new strength seemed
+to come to her. It was what Kennedy had been waiting for, the reaction
+that would leave her able for him to go on and plan for the future.
+
+He reached into a drawer of a cabinet and pulled out the various
+shoe-prints which he had already shown Norton, and which he had studied
+and restudied so carefully.
+
+"That is the print of the shoe in the dust of the Egyptian sarcophagus
+of the Museum," he said quietly. "Some one got in during the daytime
+and hid there until the place was locked. That is the print of Alfonso
+de Moche's shoe, that of Mr. Whitney's, and that of Mr. Lockwood's."
+
+He said it quickly, as though trying to gloss it over. But she would
+not have it that way. She felt stronger, and she was going to see just
+what there was there. She took the prints and studied them, though her
+hand trembled. Hers was a remarkable mind. It took only seconds to see
+what others would have seen only in minutes. But it was not the
+reasoning faculty that was aroused by what she saw. It sank deep into
+her heart.
+
+She flung the papers down.
+
+"I don't believe it!" she defied. "There is some mistake. No--it cannot
+be true!"
+
+It was a noble exhibition of faith. I think I have never seen any
+instant more tense than that in Kennedy's laboratory. There stood the
+beautiful girl declaring her faith in her lover, rejecting even the
+implication that it might have been he who had taken the dagger,
+perhaps murdered her father to insure the possession of her father's
+share of the treasure as well as the possession of herself.
+
+Kennedy did not try to combat it. Instead he treated her very
+intuitions with respect. In him there was room for both fact and
+feeling.
+
+"Senorita," he said finally, in a voice that was deep and thrilling
+with feeling, "have I ever been other than a friend to you? Have I ever
+given you cause to suspect even one little motive of mine?"
+
+She faced him, and they looked into each other's eyes an instant. But
+it was long enough for the man to understand the woman and she to
+understand him.
+
+"No," she murmured, glancing down again.
+
+"Then trust me just this once. Do as I ask you."
+
+For an instant she struggled with herself. What would he ask?
+
+"What is it?" she questioned, raising her eyes to him again.
+
+"Have you seen Mr. Lockwood?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then, I want you to see him. Surely you wish to have no secrets from
+him any more than you would wish him to have anything secret from you.
+See him. Ask him frankly about it all. It is the only fair thing to
+him--it is only fair to yourself."
+
+Senorita Mendoza was no coward. "I--I will," she almost whispered.
+
+"Splendid!" exclaimed Kennedy in admiration. "I knew that you would.
+You are not the woman who could do otherwise. May I see that you get
+home safely? Walter, call a taxicab."
+
+Senorita Mendoza was calmer, though pale and still nervous, when I
+returned. Kennedy handed her into the car and then returned to the
+laboratory for two rather large packages, which he handed to me.
+
+"You must come along with us, Walter," he said. "We shall need you."
+
+Scarcely a word was spoken as we jolted over the city pavements and at
+last reached the apartment. Inez and Craig entered and I followed,
+carrying just one of the packages as Craig had indicated by dumb show,
+leaving the other in the car, which was to wait.
+
+"I think you had better write him a note," suggested Craig, as we
+entered the living room. "I don't want you to see him until you feel
+better--and, by the way, see him here."
+
+She nodded with a wan smile, as though thinking how unusual it was for
+a meeting of lovers to be an ordeal, then excused herself to write the
+note.
+
+She had no sooner disappeared than Kennedy unwrapped the package which
+I had brought. From it he took a cedar box, oblong, with a sort of
+black disc fixed to an arm on the top. In the face of the box were two
+little square holes, with sides of cedar which converged inward into
+the box, making a pair of little quadrangular pyramidal holes which
+ended in a small black circle in the interior.
+
+He looked about the room quickly. Beside a window that opened out over
+a house several stories below stood a sectional bookcase. Into this
+bookcase, back of the books, in the shadow, he shoved the little box,
+to which he had already attached a spool of twisted wires. Then he
+opened the window and dropped the spool out, letting it unwind of its
+own weight until it fell on the roof far below. He shut the window and
+rejoined me without a word.
+
+A moment later she returned with the dainty note which she had written.
+"Shall I send it by a messenger?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, please," answered Kennedy, rising. As he moved a step to the door
+he held out his hand to her. "Senorita Mendoza," he said simply, in a
+tone that meant more than words, "you are a wonderful woman."
+
+She took his hand without a word, and a moment later we were whisked
+down in the elevator.
+
+"I must get on that roof on some pretext," remarked Kennedy, as we
+reached the street and he got his bearings. "Let me see, that house
+which backs up to the apartment is around the corner. Have the man
+drive us around there."
+
+We located the house and mounted the steps. On the wall beside the
+brownstone door was pasted a little slip of paper, "Furnished Rooms."
+
+"Splendid!" exclaimed Kennedy, as he read it. "Dismiss the taxi and
+meet me inside with the other package."
+
+By the time I had paid the man and come up the steps again Kennedy had
+made a dicker with the landlady for a double room on the third floor
+for both of us, and, by payment of a week's rent, we were to have
+immediate possession.
+
+"Our baggage will follow to-day," he explained, as we mounted the
+stairs to the room.
+
+I thought the landlady would never get through expatiating upon what a
+select place she ran, and thus leave us alone in our room, but at last
+even her flood of words was stilled by demands from a servant
+downstairs who must be instructed if the selectness of the
+establishment were to be maintained.
+
+No sooner were we alone than Kennedy tiptoed into the hall and made
+sure that we were not watched. It was then the work of only a few
+seconds to mount a ladder to a scuttle, unhook it, and gain the roof.
+
+There, dangling down from the dizzy height above, swayed the twisted
+wire. He seized it, unrolled it some more, and sent me downstairs to
+catch it, as he swung it over the edge of the roof to one of our own
+windows. Then he rejoined me.
+
+The other package, which had been heavier, consisted of another of
+those mysterious boxes, as well as several dry cells. Quickly he
+attached the wires to the box, placing the dry cells in the circuit.
+Then he began adjusting the mechanism of the box. So far I had only a
+vague idea of just what he had in mind, but gradually it began to dawn
+on me.
+
+It was perhaps half an hour, perhaps longer, after we had left the
+Senorita, before, sure that everything was all right with his line and
+the batteries which he had brought, Kennedy turned a little lever that
+moved in a semicircle, touching one after another of a series of
+buttons on the face of the cedar box, meanwhile holding a little black
+disc from the back of the box to his ear as he adjusted the thing.
+
+Nothing seemed to happen, but I could tell by the look of intentness on
+his face that he was getting along all right and was not worrying.
+
+Suddenly the look on his face changed to one of extreme satisfaction.
+He dropped the disc he was holding to his ear back into its compartment
+and turned to me.
+
+All at once it seemed as if the room in which we were was peopled by
+spirits. There was the sound of voices, loud, clear, distinct. It was
+uncanny.
+
+"He has just come in," remarked Craig.
+
+"Who?" I asked.
+
+"Lockwood--can't you recognize his voice? Listen."
+
+I did listen intently, and the more my ears became adjusted, the more
+plainly I could distinguish two voices, that of a man and that of a
+woman. It was indeed Lockwood and the Senorita, far above us.
+
+I would have uttered an exclamation of amazement, but I could not miss
+what they were saying.
+
+"Then you--you believe what he says?" asked Lockwood earnestly.
+
+"Professor Kennedy has the prints," replied Inez tremulously.
+
+"You saw them?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you believe what HE says, too?"
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, tapping the box lightly.
+
+"A vocaphone," replied Kennedy. "The little box that hears and talks."
+
+"Can they hear us?" I asked, in an awestruck whisper.
+
+"Not unless I want them to hear," he replied, indicating a switch. "You
+remember, of course, the various mechanical and electrical ears, such
+as the detectaphone, which we have used for eavesdropping in other
+cases?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Well, this is a new application which has been made of the
+detectaphone. When I was using that disc from the compartment there, I
+had really a detectaphone. But this is even better. You see how neat it
+all is? This is the detective service, and more. We can 'listen in' and
+we don't have to use ear-pieces, either, for this is a regular
+loud-speaking telephone--it talks right out in meeting. Those square
+holes with the converging sides act as a sort of megaphone to the
+receivers, those little circles back there inside magnifying the sound
+and throwing it out here in the room, so that we can hear just as well
+as if we were up there in the room where they are talking. Listen--I
+think they are talking again."
+
+"I suppose you know that Whitney and I have placed detectives on the
+trail of Norton," we could hear Lockwood say.
+
+"You have?" came back the answer in a voice which for the first time
+sounded cold.
+
+Lockwood must have recognized it. He had made a mistake. It was no
+sufficient answer to anything that he had done to assert that some one
+else had also done something.
+
+"Inez," he said, and we could almost hear his feet as he moved over the
+floor in her direction in a last desperate appeal, "can't you trust me,
+when I tell you that everything is all right, that they are trying to
+ruin me--with you?"
+
+There was a silence, during which we could almost hear her quick breath
+come and go.
+
+"Women--not even Peruvian women are like the women of the past,
+Chester," she said at length. "We are not playthings. Perhaps we have
+hearts--but we also have heads. We are not to be taken up and put down
+as you please. We may love--but we also think. Chester, I have been to
+see Professor Kennedy, and--"
+
+She stopped. It hurt too much to repeat what she had seen.
+
+"Inez," he implored.
+
+There was evidently a great struggle of love and suspicion going on in
+her, her love of him, her memory of her father, the recollection of
+what she had heard and seen. No one could have been as we were without
+wishing to help her. Yet no one could help her. She must work out her
+own life herself.
+
+"Yes," she said finally, the struggle ended. "What is it?"
+
+"Do you want me to tell you the truth?"
+
+"Yes," she murmured.
+
+His voice was low and tense.
+
+"I was there--yes--but the dagger was gone!"
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE VOICE FROM THE AIR
+
+
+"Do you believe it?" I asked Kennedy, as the voices died away, leaving
+us with a feeling that some one had gone out of the very room in which
+we were.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. But I cannot say that he
+seemed ill pleased at the result of the interview.
+
+"We'll just keep this vocaphone in," he remarked. "It may come in handy
+some time. Now, I think we had better go back to the laboratory! Things
+have begun to move."
+
+On the way back he stopped to telephone Norton to meet us and a few
+minutes after we arrived, the archaeologist entered.
+
+Kennedy lost no time in coming directly to the point, and Norton could
+see, in fact seemed to expect and be prepared for what was coming.
+
+"Well," exclaimed Kennedy, "you've done it, this time!"
+
+"I know what you are going to ask," returned Norton. "You are going to
+ask me why I did it. And I'm going to tell you. After I left you, the
+other day, I thought about it a long time. The more I thought, the more
+of a shame it seemed to me that a girl like that should be made a
+victim of her feelings. It wasn't so much what they have done to me
+that made me do it. I would have acted the same if it had been de Moche
+instead of Lockwood who was playing on her heart. I was afraid, to tell
+the truth, that you wouldn't tell her until it was too late. And she's
+too good to throw herself away and allow her fortune to be wasted by a
+couple of speculators."
+
+"Very well," said Craig. "For the sake of argument, let us admit all
+that. What did you expect to accomplish by it?"
+
+"Why--put an end to it, of course."
+
+"But do you think she was going to accept as truth what you told her?
+Would that be natural for one so high-strung?"
+
+"Perhaps not--right away. But I supposed she would come to you--as I
+see she has, for you know about it. After that, it was only a question
+of time. It may have been a heroic remedy, but the disease was
+critical."
+
+"Suppose," suggested Craig, "that, after all, he told her that he was
+there in the Museum, but that he did not get the dagger. And suppose
+that she believed it. What then?"
+
+Norton looked up quickly. "Did he tell her that?"
+
+"I am supposing that he did," repeated Craig, declining to place
+himself in a position which might lead to disclosing how he found out.
+
+"Then I should say that he was a great deal cleverer than I gave him
+credit for being," returned Norton.
+
+"Well, it's done now, and can't be undone. Have you found out anything
+about the de Moches?"
+
+"Not very much, I must admit. Of course, you know I'm not on the best
+of terms with them, for some reason or other. But I've been around the
+Prince Edward Albert a good deal, and I don't think they've been able
+to do much that I haven't some kind of line on. Alfonso seems to be
+moping. His professors here tell me that he has been neglecting his
+work sadly for the past few days. The Senora and Whitney seem to be as
+friendly as ever. I should say that they were going the pace fast, and
+it shows on him."
+
+I glanced significantly at Kennedy, but he betrayed nothing that might
+lead one to suppose he had discovered the cause. Evidently he was not
+ready yet to come out into the open and expected further developments
+on the poisoned cigarette clue.
+
+The telephone rang and Craig took down the receiver.
+
+"Yes, this is Kennedy," he answered. "Oh, hello, Lockwood. What's that?
+You've been trying to get me all day? I just came in. Why, yes, I can
+see you in about half an hour."
+
+"I guess I'd better clear out," said Norton with a bitter laugh, as
+Kennedy hung up the receiver. "There have been enough crimes committed
+without adding another murder to the list."
+
+"Keep on watching the de Moches," requested Kennedy as Norton made his
+way to the door.
+
+"Yes," agreed Norton. "They will bear it--particularly Alfonso. They
+are hot-blooded. You never know what they are going to do, and they
+keep their own counsel. I might hope that Lockwood would forget; but a
+de Moche--never."
+
+I cannot say that I envied him very much, for doubtless what he said
+was true, though his danger might be mitigated by the fact that the
+dagger was no longer in his Museum. Still, it would never have left
+Peru, I reflected, if it had not been for him, and there is, even in
+the best of us, a smouldering desire for revenge.
+
+Lockwood was more than prompt. I had expected that he would burst into
+the laboratory prepared to clean things out. Instead he came in as
+though nothing at all had happened.
+
+"There's no use mincing words, Kennedy," he began. "You know that I
+know what has happened. That scoundrel, Norton, has told Inez that you
+had shoe-prints of some one who was in the Museum the night of the
+robbery and that those shoe-prints correspond with mine. As a matter of
+fact, Kennedy, I was there. I was there to get the dagger. But before I
+could get it, some one else must have done so. It was gone."
+
+I wanted to believe Lockwood. As for Craig he said nothing.
+
+"Then, when I did have a chance to get away that night," he continued,
+"I went over to Mendoza's. The rest you know."
+
+"You have told Inez that?" asked Kennedy in order to seem properly
+surprised.
+
+"Yes--and I think she believes me. I can't say. Things are strained
+with her. It will take time. I'm not one of those who can take a girl
+by main force and make her do what she won't do. I wish I could smooth
+things over. Let me see the prints."
+
+Kennedy handed them over to him. He looked at them, long and closely,
+then handed back the damning evidence against himself.
+
+"I know it would be no use to destroy these," he remarked. "In the
+first place that would really incriminate me. And in the second I
+suppose you have copies."
+
+Craig smiled blandly.
+
+"But I can tell you," he exclaimed, bringing his fist down on the
+laboratory table with a bang, "that before I lose that girl, somebody
+will pay for it--and there won't be any mistakes made, either."
+
+The scowl on his face and the menacing look in his eye showed that now,
+with his back up against the wall, he was not bluffing.
+
+He seemed to get little satisfaction out of his visit to us, and in
+fact I think he made it more in a spirit of bravado than anything else.
+
+Lockwood had scarcely gone before Kennedy pulled out the University
+schedule, and ran his finger down it.
+
+"Alfonso ought to be at a lecture in the School of Mines," he said
+finally, folding up the paper. "I wish you'd go over and see if he is
+there, and, if he is, ask him to step into the laboratory."
+
+The lecture was in progress all right, but when I peered into the room
+it was evident that de Moche was not there. Norton was right. The young
+man was neglecting his work. Evidently the repeated rebuffs of Inez had
+worked havoc with him.
+
+Nor was he at the hotel, as we found out by calling up.
+
+There was only one other place that I could think of where he would be
+likely to be and that was at the apartment of Inez. Apparently the same
+idea occurred to Kennedy, for he suggested going back to our
+observation point in the boarding-house and finding out.
+
+All the rest of the day we listened through the vocaphone, but without
+finding out a thing of interest. Now and then we would try the
+detective instrument, the little black disc in the back, but with no
+better success. Then we determined to listen in relays, one listening,
+while the other went out for dinner.
+
+It must have been just a bit after dark that we could hear Inez talking
+in a low tone with Juanita.
+
+A buzzing noise indicated that there was some one at the hall door.
+
+"If it's any one for me," we heard Inez say, "tell them that I will be
+out directly. I'm not fit to be seen now."
+
+The door was opened and a voice which we could not place asked for the
+senorita. A moment later Juanita returned and asked the visitor to be
+seated a few moments.
+
+It was not long before we were suddenly aware that there was another
+person in the room. We could hear whispers. The faithful little
+vocaphone even picked them up and shot them down to us.
+
+"Is everything all right?" whispered one, a new voice which was
+somewhat familiar I thought, but disguised beyond recognition.
+
+"Yes. She'll be out in a minute."
+
+"Now, remember what I told you. If this thing works you get fifty
+dollars more. I'd better put this mask on--damn it!--the slit's torn.
+It'll do. I'll hide here as soon as we hear her. That's a pretty nice
+private ambulance you have down there. Did you tell the elevator boy
+that she had suddenly been taken ill? That's all fixed, then. I've got
+the stuff--amyl nitrite--she'll go off like a shot. But we'll have to
+work quick. It only keeps her under a few minutes. I can't wear this
+mask down and I'm afraid some one will recognize me. Oh, you brought a
+beard. Good. I'll give you the signal. There must be no noise. Yes, I
+saw the stretcher where you left it in the hall."
+
+"All right, Doc," returned the first and unfamiliar voice.
+
+It all happened so quickly that we were completely bowled over for the
+moment. Who was the man addressed as "Doc"? There was no time to find
+out, no time to do anything, apparently, so quickly had the plot been
+sprung.
+
+I looked at Kennedy, aghast, not knowing what to do in this unexpected
+crisis.
+
+A moment later we heard a voice, "I'm sorry to have had to keep you
+waiting, but what is it that I can do for you?"
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed Kennedy. "It is Inez herself!"
+
+It was altogether too late to get over there to warn her, perhaps even
+to rescue her. What could we do? If we could only shout for help. But
+what good would that do, around a corner and so far away?
+
+The vocaphone itself!
+
+Quickly Kennedy turned another switch, of a rheostat, which accentuated
+a whisper to almost a shout.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, Senorita," he cried. "This is Kennedy talking. Look
+under the bookcase by the window. You will find a cedar box. It is a
+detective vocaphone through which I can hear you and which is talking
+out to you. I have heard something just there just now--"
+
+"Yes, yes. Go on!"
+
+"You are threatened. Shout! Shout!"
+
+Just then there came a sound of a scuffle and a muffled cry which was
+not much above a whisper, as though a strong hand was clapped over her
+mouth.
+
+What could we do?
+
+"Juanita--Juanita--help!--police!" shouted Craig himself through the
+vocaphone.
+
+An instant later we could hear other screams as Juanita heard and
+spread the alarm, not a second too soon.
+
+"Come on, Walter," shouted Kennedy dashing out of the room, now that he
+was assured the alarm had been given.
+
+We hurried around the corner, and into the apartment. One of the
+elevators was up, and no one was running the other, but we opened the
+gates and Kennedy ran it up by himself.
+
+In the Mendoza apartment all was a babel of voices, every one talking
+at once.
+
+"Did you get them?" Craig asked, looking about.
+
+"No, sir," replied the elevator boy. "One of them came in from the
+ambulance and told me Miss Mendoza was suddenly taken sick. He rode up
+with the stretcher. The other one must have walked up."
+
+"Do you know him? Has he ever been here before?"
+
+"I can't say, sir. I didn't see him. At least, sir, when I heard the
+screams I ran in from the elevator, which the other one told me to wait
+with--left the door open. Just as I ran in, they dodged out past me,
+jumped into the car and rode down. I guess they must have had the
+engine of the ambulance motor running, sir, if they got away without
+you seeing them."
+
+We were too late to head them from speeding off. But, at least, we had
+saved the Senorita. She was terribly upset by the attack, much shaken,
+but really all right.
+
+"Have you any idea who it could be?" asked Craig as the faithful
+Juanita cared for her.
+
+"I don't know the man who was waiting and 'Nita never saw him, either,"
+she replied. "The one who jumped out from behind the portieres had on a
+mask and a false beard. But I didn't recognize anything about him."
+
+Sudden as the attack had been and serious as might have been the
+outcome, we could not but feel happy that it had been frustrated.
+
+Yet it seemed that some one ought to be delegated to see that such a
+thing could not occur again.
+
+"We must think up some means of protecting you," soothed Kennedy. "Let
+me see, Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Whitney seem to be the closest to you. If
+you don't mind I'll call them up. I wonder if you'd object if we had a
+little luncheon up here, to-morrow? I have a special reason for asking
+it. I want to insure your safety and we may as well meet on common
+ground."
+
+"There isn't the slightest objection in the world," she replied, as
+Kennedy reached for the telephone.
+
+We had some little difficulty in locating both Lockwood and Whitney,
+but finally after a time managed to find them and arrange for the
+conference on the Senorita's safety for the next day.
+
+Outside Kennedy gave instructions to the officer on the beat to watch
+the apartment particularly, and there was no reason now to fear a
+repetition of the attempt, at least that night.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE ANTIDOTE
+
+
+Early the following morning Kennedy left me alone in the laboratory and
+made a trip downtown, where he visited a South American tobacco dealer
+and placed a rush order for a couple of hundred cigarettes exactly
+similar in shape and quality to those which Mendoza had smoked and
+which the others seemed also to prefer, except, however, that the
+deadly drug was left out.
+
+While he was gone, it occurred to me to take up again the hunt for
+Alfonso. Norton was not in his little office, nor could I find Alfonso
+anywhere about the campus. In fact he seemed to have almost dropped out
+of his University work for the time. Accordingly, I turned my steps
+toward the Prince Edward Albert Hotel, in the hope that he might be
+there.
+
+Inquiries of the clerk at the desk told me that he had been there, but
+was out just at that moment. I did not see Whitney around, nor the
+Senora, so I sat down to wait, having nothing better to do until
+Kennedy's return.
+
+I was about to give it up and go, when I heard a cab drive up to the
+door and, looking up, I saw Alfonso get out. He saw me about the same
+time and we bowed. I do not think he even tried to avoid me.
+
+"I haven't seen you for some time," I remarked, searching his face,
+which seemed to me to be paler than it had been.
+
+"No," he replied. "I haven't been feeling very well lately and I've
+been running up into the country now and then to a quiet hotel--a sort
+of rest cure, I suppose you would call it. How are you? How is Senorita
+Inez?"
+
+"Very well," I replied, wondering whether he had said what he did in
+the hope of establishing a complete alibi for the events of the night
+before.
+
+Briefly I told him what had happened, omitting reference to the
+vocaphone and our real part in it.
+
+"That is terrible," he exclaimed. "Oh, if she would only allow me to
+take care of her--I would take her back to our own country, where she
+would be safe, far away from these people who seek to prey on all of
+us."
+
+He paced up and down nervously, and I could see that my information had
+added nothing to his peace of mind, though, at the same time, he had
+betrayed nothing on his part.
+
+"I was just passing through," I said finally, looking at my watch, "and
+happened to see you. I hope your mother is well?"
+
+"As well as is to be expected, surrounded by people who watch every
+act," he replied, I thought with a rap at us for having Norton about
+and so active, though I could not be sure.
+
+We separated, and I hastened back to the laboratory to report to Craig
+that Alfonso was rusticating for his health.
+
+Kennedy, on his part, had had an experience, though it was no more
+conclusive than my own. After he had left the tobacco district, he had
+walked up Wall Street to the subway. In the crowd he had seen Senora de
+Moche, although she had not seen him. He had turned and followed her
+until she entered the building in which Whitney and his associates had
+their offices. Whether it indicated that she was still leading them a
+chase, or they her, was impossible to determine, but it at least showed
+that they were still on friendly terms with each other.
+
+In the laboratory he could always find something to do on the case,
+either in perfecting his chemical tests of the various drugs we had
+discovered, or in trying to decipher some similarities in the rough
+printing of the four warnings and the anonymous letter with the known
+handwriting of those connected with the case, many specimens of which
+he bad been quietly collecting. That in itself was a tremendously
+minute job, entailing not only a vast amount of expert knowledge such
+as he had collected in his years of studying crime scientifically, but
+the most exact measurements and careful weighing and balancing of
+trifles, which to the unscientific conveyed no meanings at all. Still,
+he seemed to be forging ahead, though he never betrayed what direction
+the evidence seemed to be taking.
+
+The package of cigarettes which he had ordered downtown was delivered
+about an hour after his return and seemed to be the signal for him to
+drop work, for the meeting with Lockwood and Whitney had been set
+early. He stowed the package in his pockets and then went over to a
+cabinet in which he kept a number of rather uncommon drugs. From it he
+took a little vial which he shoved into his waistcoat pocket.
+
+"Are you ready, Walter?" he asked.
+
+"Whenever you are," I said, laying aside my writing.
+
+Together we made our way down to the Mendoza apartment which had been
+the scene of the near-tragedy the night before. Outside, he paused for
+several moments to make inquiries about any suspicious persons that
+might have been seen lurking about the neighbourhood. None of the
+attendants in the apartment remembered having seen any, and they were
+now very alert after the two events, the murder and the attempted
+abduction. Not a clue seemed to have been left by the villain who had
+been called "Doc."
+
+"How do you feel after your thrilling experience?" greeted Craig
+pleasantly, as Juanita admitted us and Inez came forward.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Kennedy," she answered, with a note of sadness in her tone.
+"It makes me feel so alone in the world. If it were not for 'Nita--and
+you, I don't know what I should do."
+
+"Doesn't Mr. Lockwood count?" asked Kennedy observantly.
+
+"Of course--everything," she answered hastily. "But he has to be away
+so much on business, and--"
+
+She paused and sighed. I could not help wondering whether, after all,
+his explanation of the dagger episode had been enough to satisfy her.
+Had she really accepted it?
+
+Neither Lockwood nor Whitney had arrived, and Kennedy improved the
+opportunity to have a quiet talk aside with her, at which, I imagine,
+he was arranging a programme of what was to happen at this meeting and
+her part in it to co-operate with him.
+
+She had left the room for a moment and we were alone. It was evidently
+a part of his plan, for no sooner was she gone than he opened the
+package of cigarettes which he had ordered and took out from the box in
+which Mendoza had kept his cigarettes those that were there,
+substituting those he had brought.
+
+We had not long to wait, now. Lockwood and Whitney came together. I was
+interested to see the greeting of Inez and her lover. Was it pure
+fancy, or did I detect a trace of coldness as though there had sprung
+up something between them? As far as Lockwood was concerned, I felt
+sure that he was eager to break down any barrier that kept them from
+being as they had been.
+
+Whitney took her hand and held it, in a playful sort of way. "I wish I
+were a young buck," he smiled. "No one would dare look at you--much
+less try to carry you off. Yes, we must be more careful of our little
+beauty, or we shall lose her."
+
+They turned to greet us. I felt, as we shook hands, that it was much
+the same sort of handshake that one sees in the prize ring--to be
+followed by the clang of a bell, then all going to it, in battle royal,
+with the devil after the hindmost.
+
+There was scarcely a chance for a preliminary bout before luncheon was
+announced, and we entered the cozy little dining-room to seat ourselves
+at the daintiest of tables. One could feel the hostess radiating
+hospitality, even on such a cross-current set of guests as we were, and
+for the time, I almost felt that it had been Kennedy's purpose to
+promote a love-feast instead of an armed truce.
+
+Nothing was said about the main cause of our being together for some
+time, and the small talk almost lifted for a time the incubus that had
+settled down on all our lives since the tragedy in the den at the other
+end of the suite. But the fact could not be blinked.
+
+Tacitly every one seemed to wait on Kennedy to sound the gong. Finally
+he did so.
+
+"Of course," he began, clearing his throat, "there is no use making
+believe about anything. I think we all understand each other better now
+than we have ever done before. As for me, I am in this case under a
+promise to stick to it and fight it to the end. I suppose the rest of
+you are, also. But that need not prevent us agreeing on one thing. We
+can work together to protect Senorita Mendoza, at least, from such
+danger as threatened her last night."
+
+"It's a dastardly shame," Lockwood exclaimed angrily, "that a man who
+would attempt a thing like that should go unpunished."
+
+"Show me how to trace him and I'll guarantee the punishment," rejoined
+Craig drily.
+
+"I am not a detective," replied Lockwood.
+
+Kennedy forebore to reply in kind, though I knew there was a ready
+answer on his tongue for the lover.
+
+Ever since they had arrived, the Senorita had seen that they were well
+supplied with cigarettes from the case in which she and they supposed
+were the genuine South American brand of her father. Kennedy and I
+smoked them, too, although neither of us liked them very much. The
+others were smoking furiously.
+
+"However," resumed Kennedy, "I do not feel that I want to intrude
+myself in this matter without being perfectly frank and having the
+approval of Senorita Mendoza. She has known both of you longer and more
+intimately than she has known me, although she has seen fit to place
+certain of her affairs in my hands, for which I trust I shall render a
+good account of my stewardship. It seems to me, though, that if there
+is, as we now know there is, some one whom we do not know"--he
+paused--"who has sunk so low as to wish to carry her off, apparently
+where she shall be out of the influence of her friends, it is only
+right that precautions should be taken to prevent it."
+
+"What is your suggestion?" demanded Whitney, rather contentiously.
+
+"Would there be any objection," asked Kennedy, "if I should ask my old
+friend,--or any of you may do it,--Deputy Commissioner O'Connor to
+detail a plainclothesman to watch this house and neighbourhood,
+especially at night?"
+
+We watched the faces of the others. But it was really of no use.
+
+"I think that is an excellent plan," decided Inez herself. "I shall
+feel much safer and surely none of you can be jealous of the city
+detectives."
+
+Kennedy smiled. She had cut the Gordian knot with a blow. Neither
+Lockwood nor Whitney could object. The purpose of the luncheon was
+accomplished.
+
+In fact he did not wait for further consideration, but excused himself
+from the table for a moment to call up our old friend O'Connor and tell
+him how gravely his man was needed. It was a matter of only a few
+minutes when he returned from the other room.
+
+"He will detail Burke for this special service as long as we want him,"
+reported Craig, sitting down again.
+
+Inez was delighted, naturally, for the affair had been a terrific shock
+to her. I could see how relieved she felt, for I was sitting directly
+next to her.
+
+The maid had, meanwhile brought in the coffee and Inez had been waiting
+to pour until Kennedy returned. She did not do so, now, either,
+however. It seemed as if she were waiting for some kind of signal from
+Kennedy.
+
+"What a splendid view of the park you get here," remarked Kennedy
+turning toward the long, low windows that opened on a balustraded
+balcony. "Just look at that stream of automobiles passing on the west
+drive."
+
+Common politeness dictated that all should turn and look, although
+there was no novelty in the sight for any of us.
+
+As I have said, I was sitting next to Inez. To me she was a far more
+attractive sight than any view of the park. I barely looked out of the
+window. Imagine my surprise, then, at seeing her take advantage of the
+diversion to draw from the folds of her dress a little vial and pour a
+bit of yellowish, syrupy liquid into the cup of coffee which she was
+preparing for Whitney.
+
+I could not help looking at her quickly. She saw that I had seen her
+and raised her other hand with a finger to her lips and an explanatory
+glance at Kennedy who was keeping the others interested. Instantly, I
+recognized the little vial which Craig had shoved into his waistcoat
+pocket. That had been the purpose of his whispered conference with her
+when we arrived. I said nothing, but determined to observe more closely.
+
+More coffee and more cigarettes followed, always from the same box
+which was now on the table. The luncheon developed almost a real
+conversation. For the time, under the spell of our hostess, we nearly
+forgot that we were in reality bitter enemies.
+
+My real interest, as time passed, centred in Whitney and I could not
+help watching him closely. Was it a fact, or was it merely my
+imagination? He seemed quite different. The pupils of his eyes did not
+seem to be quite so dilated as they had been at other times, or even
+when he arrived. Even his heart action appeared to be more normal. I
+think Inez noticed it, too. There was none of the wildness in his
+conversation, such as there often had been at other times.
+
+Our party was prolonged beyond the time we had expected, but, although
+he had much on his mind, Kennedy made no move to break it up. In fact
+he did everything to encourage it.
+
+At last, however, the others did notice the time, and I think it was
+with sincere regret that the truce was broken. Even then, no parting
+shots were indulged in.
+
+As we left, Inez thanked Kennedy for his consideration, and I am sure
+that that in itself was reward enough. We parted from Lockwood, who
+wished to remain a little while, and rode down in the elevator with
+Whitney, a changed man.
+
+"I'll walk over to the elevated with you," he said. "I was going to my
+hotel, but I think I'll go down to the office instead."
+
+Evidently he had got Senora de Moche out of his mind, at least
+temporarily, I thought. Then for the first time I recalled that during
+the whole luncheon there had been no reference to either the Senora or
+Alfonso, though both must have been in our minds often.
+
+"What was it you had Inez drop into Whitney's coffee?" I asked Craig as
+we parted from him and rode uptown.
+
+"You saw that?" he smiled. "It was pilocarpine, jaborandi, a plant
+found largely in Brazil, one of the antidotes for stramonium poisoning.
+It doesn't work with every one. But it seems to have done so with him.
+Besides, the caffeine in the coffee probably aided the pilocarpine.
+Then, too, I made them smoke cigarettes without the dope that is being
+fed them. Lockwood's case, for some reason, hasn't gone far. But did
+you notice how the treatment contracted the pupils of Whitney's eyes
+almost back to normal again?"
+
+I had and said so, adding, "But what was your idea?"
+
+"I think I've got at the case from a brand-new angle," he replied.
+"Unless I am greatly mistaken, when the person who is doing the doping
+sees that Whitney is getting better--why, I think you all noticed it,
+Inez and Lockwood as well as you--it will mean another attempt to
+substitute more cigarettes doped with that drug. I think it's by
+substitution that it's being done. We'll see."
+
+At the laboratory, Kennedy called Norton and described briefly what had
+happened, especially to Whitney.
+
+"Now is your chance, Norton," he added, "to do some real good work. I
+want some one to watch the Senora, see if she, too, notes the
+difference in him. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly," returned Norton. "That is something I think I can do."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE BURGLAR POWDER
+
+
+It was not until after dinner that we heard again from Norton. He had
+evidently spent the time faithfully hanging about the Prince Edward
+Albert, but Whitney had not come in, although the Senora and Alfonso
+were about.
+
+"I saw them leaving the dining-room," he reported to us in the
+laboratory directly afterward, "just as Whitney came in. They could not
+see me. I took good care of that. But, say, there is a change in
+Whitney, isn't there? I wonder what caused it?"
+
+"It's as noticeable as that?" asked Kennedy. "And did she notice it?"
+
+"I'm sure of it," replied Norton confidently. "She couldn't help it.
+Besides, after he left her and went into the dining-room himself she
+and Alfonso seemed to be discussing something. I'm sure it was that."
+
+Kennedy said nothing, except to thank Norton and compliment him on his
+powers of observation. Norton took the praise with evident
+satisfaction, and after a moment excused himself, saying that he had
+some work to do over in the Museum.
+
+He had no sooner gone than Kennedy took from a drawer a little packet
+of powder and an atomizer full of liquid, which he dropped into his
+pocket.
+
+"I think the Prince Edward Albert will be the scene of our operations,
+to-night, Walter," he announced, reaching for his hat.
+
+He seemed to be in a hurry and it was not many minutes before we
+entered. As he passed the dining-room he glanced in. There was Whitney,
+not half through a leisurely dinner. Neither of the de Moches seemed to
+be downstairs.
+
+Kennedy sauntered over to the desk and looked over the register. We
+already knew that Whitney and the Senora had suites on the eighth
+floor, on opposite sides and at opposite ends of the hall. The de Moche
+suite was under the number 810. That of Whitney was 825.
+
+"Is either 823 or 827 vacant?" asked Kennedy as the clerk came over to
+us.
+
+He turned to look over his list. "Yes, 827 is vacant," he found.
+
+"I'd like to have it," said Kennedy, making some excuse about our
+luggage being delayed, as he paid for it for the night.
+
+"Front!" called the clerk, and a moment later we found ourselves in the
+elevator riding up.
+
+The halls were deserted at that time in the evening except for a
+belated theatre-goer, and in a few minutes there would ensue a period
+in which there was likely to be no one about.
+
+We entered the room next to Whitney's without being observed by any one
+of whom we cared. The boy left us, and it was a simple matter after
+that to open a rather heavy door that communicated between the two
+suites and was not protected by a Yale lock.
+
+Instead of switching on the lights, Kennedy first looked about
+carefully until he was assured that there was no one there. It seemed
+to me to be an unnecessary caution, for we knew Whitney was down-stairs
+and would probably be there a long time. But he seemed to think it
+necessary. Positive that we were alone, he made a hasty survey of the
+rooms. Then he seemed to select as a starting-point a table in one
+corner of the sitting-room on which lay a humidor and a heavy metal box
+for cigarettes.
+
+Quickly he sprinkled on the floor, from the hall door to the table on
+which the case of cigarettes lay, some of the powder which I had seen
+him wrap up in the laboratory before we left. Then, with the atomizer,
+he sprayed over it something that had a pungent, familiar
+odour--walking backwards from the hall door to the table, as he sprayed.
+
+"Don't you want more light?" I asked, starting to cross to a window to
+let the moonlight stream in.
+
+"Don't walk on it, Walter," he whispered, pushing me back. "No, I don't
+need any more light."
+
+"What are you doing?" I asked, mystified at his actions.
+
+"First I sprinkled some powdered iodine on the floor," he replied, "and
+then sprayed over just enough ammonia to moisten it. It will evaporate
+quickly, leaving what I call my anti-burglar powder."
+
+"I'm sure I wouldn't be thought one of the fraternity for the world," I
+observed, stepping aside to give him all the room he wanted in which to
+operate.
+
+He had finished his work by this time and now the evening wind was
+blowing away the slight fumes that had arisen. For a few moments he
+left our door into Whitney's room open, in order to insure clearing
+away the odour. Then he quietly closed it, but did not lock it again.
+
+We waited a few minutes, then Craig leaned over to me. "I wish you'd go
+down and see how near Whitney is through dinner," he said. "If he is
+through, do something, anything to keep him down there. Only be as
+careful as you can not to be seen by any one who knows us."
+
+I rode down in an empty elevator and cautiously made my way to the
+dining-room. Whitney had finished much sooner than I had expected and
+was not there. Much as I wanted not to be seen, I found that it was
+necessary to make a tour of the hotel to find him and I did so,
+wondering what expedient I would adopt to keep him down there if I
+found him. I did not have to adopt any, however. Whitney was almost
+alone in the writing-room, and a big pile of letters beside him showed
+me that he would be busy for some time. I rode back to the room to tell
+Craig, flattering myself that I had not been seen.
+
+"Good," he exclaimed. "I don't think we'll have to wait much longer, if
+anything at all is going to happen."
+
+In the darkness we settled ourselves for another vigil that was to last
+we knew not how long. Neither of us spoke as we half crouched in the
+shadow of our room, listening.
+
+Slowly the time passed. Would any one take advantage of the opportunity
+to tamper with the box of cigarettes on the table?
+
+I fell to speculating. Who could it possibly have been that had
+conceived this devilish plot? What was back of it all? I wondered
+whether it were possible that Lockwood, now that Mendoza was out of the
+way, could desire to remove Whitney, the sole remaining impediment to
+possessing the whole of the treasure as well as Inez? Then there were
+the Senora and Alfonso, the one with a deep race and family grievance,
+the other a rejected suitor. What might not they do with some weird
+South American poison?
+
+Once or twice we heard the elevator door clang and waited expectantly,
+but nothing happened. I began to wonder whether, even if some one had a
+pass-key to the suite, we could hear him enter if he was quiet. The
+outside hall was thickly carpeted, and deadened every footfall if one
+exercised only reasonable care. The rooms themselves were much the same.
+
+"Don't you think we might have the door ajar a little?" I suggested
+anxiously.
+
+"Sh!" was Kennedy's only comment in the negative.
+
+I glanced now and then at my watch and by straining my eyes was
+surprised to see how early it was yet. The minutes were surely
+leaden-footed.
+
+In the darkness, I fell again to reviewing the weird succession of
+events. I am not by nature superstitious, but in the black silence I
+could well imagine a staring succession of eyes, beginning with the
+dilated pupils of Whitney and passing on to the corpse-like expression
+of Mendoza, but always ending with the remarkable, piercing, black eyes
+of the Indian woman with the melancholy-visaged son, as they had
+impressed me the first time I saw them and, in fact, ever since. Was it
+a freak of my mind, or was there some reason for it?
+
+Suddenly I heard in the next room what sounded like a series of little
+explosions, as though some one were treading on match heads.
+
+"My burglar powder works," muttered Craig to me in a hoarse whisper.
+"Every step, even those of a mouse running across, sets it off!"
+
+He rose quickly and threw open the door into Whitney's suite. I sprang
+after him.
+
+There, in the shadows, I saw a dark form, starting back in quick
+retreat. But we were too late. He was cat-like, too quick for us.
+
+In the dim light of the little explosions we could catch a glimpse of
+the person who had been craftily working with the dread drug to drive
+Whitney and others insane. But the face was masked!
+
+He banged shut the door after him and fled down the hall, making a turn
+to a flight of steps.
+
+We followed, and at the steps paused a moment. "You go up, Walter,"
+shouted Kennedy. "I'll go down."
+
+It was fifteen minutes later before we met downstairs, neither of us
+with a trace of the intruder. He seemed to have vanished like smoke.
+
+"Must have had a room, like ourselves," remarked Craig somewhat
+chagrined at the outcome of his scheme. "And if he was clever enough to
+have a room, he is clever enough to have a disguise that would fool the
+elevator boys for a minute. No, he has gone. But I'll wager he won't
+try any more substitutions of stramonium-poisoned cigarettes for a
+while. It was too close to be comfortable."
+
+We were baffled again, and this time by a mysterious masked man. Could
+it be the same whom we heard over the vocaphone addressed as "Doc"?
+Perhaps it was, but that gave us no hint as to his identity. He seemed
+just as far away as ever.
+
+We waited around the elevators for some time, but nothing happened.
+Kennedy even sought out the manager of the hotel, and after telling who
+he was, had a search made of the guests who might be suspected. The
+best we could do was to leave word that the employees might be put on
+the lookout for anything of a suspicious nature.
+
+Whitney, the innocent cause of all this commotion, was still in the
+writing-room with his letters.
+
+"I think I ought to tell him," decided Kennedy as we passed down the
+lobby.
+
+He seemed surprised to see us, as we strolled up to his writing desk,
+but pushed aside the few letters which he had not finished and asked us
+to sit down.
+
+"I don't know whether you have noticed it," began Craig, "but I wonder
+how you feel?"
+
+Whitney had expected something else rather than his health as the
+subject of a quiz. "Pretty good now," he answered before he knew it,
+"although I must admit that for the past few days I have wondered
+whether I wasn't slowing up a bit--or rather going too fast."
+
+"Would you like to know why you feel that way?" asked Craig.
+
+Whitney was now genuinely puzzled. It was perfectly evident, as it had
+been all the time, that he had not the slightest inkling of what was
+going on.
+
+As Craig briefly unfolded what we had discovered and the reason for it,
+Whitney watched him aghast.
+
+"Poisoned cigarettes," he repeated slowly. "Well, who would ever have
+thought it. You can bet your last jitney I'll be careful what I smoke
+in the future, if I have to smoke only original packages. And it was
+that, partly, that ailed Mendoza?"
+
+Kennedy nodded. "Don't take any pilocarpine, just because I told you
+that was what I used. You have given yourself the best prescription,
+just now. Be careful what you smoke. And, don't get excited if you seem
+to be stepping on matches up there in your room for a little while,
+either. It's nothing."
+
+Whitney's only known way of thanking anybody was to invite them to
+adjourn to the cafe, and accordingly we started across the hall, after
+he had gathered up his correspondence. The information had made more
+work that night impossible for him.
+
+As we crossed from the writing-room, we saw Alfonso de Moche coming in
+from the street. He saw us and came over to speak. Was it a
+coincidence, or was it merely a blind? Was he the one who had got away
+and now calculated to come back and throw us off guard?
+
+Whitney asked him where he had been, but he replied quickly that his
+mother had not been feeling very well after dinner and had gone to bed,
+while he strolled out and had dropped into a picture show. That, I
+felt, was at least clever. The intruder had been a man.
+
+De Moche excused himself, and we continued our walk to the cafe, where
+Whitney restored his shattered peace of mind somewhat.
+
+"What's the result of your detective work on Norton?" ventured Kennedy
+at last, seeing that Whitney was in a more expansive frame of mind, and
+taking a chance.
+
+"Oh," returned Whitney, "he's scared, all right. Why, he has been
+hanging around this hotel--watching me. He thinks I don't know it, I
+suppose, but I do."
+
+Kennedy and I exchanged glances.
+
+"But he's slippery," went on Whitney. "He knows that he is being
+shadowed and the men tell me that they lose him, now and then. To tell
+the truth I don't trust most of these private detectives. I think their
+little tissue paper reports are half-faked, anyhow."
+
+He seemed to want to say no more on the subject, from which I took it
+that he had discovered nothing of importance.
+
+"One thing, though," he recollected, after a moment. "He has been going
+to see Inez Mendoza, they tell me."
+
+"Yes?" queried Kennedy.
+
+"Confound him. He pretty nearly got Lockwood in bad with her, too,"
+said Whitney, then leaning over confidentially added, "Say, Kennedy,
+honestly, now, you don't believe that shoe-print stuff, do you?"
+
+"I see no reason to doubt it," returned Kennedy with diplomatic
+firmness. "Why?"
+
+"Well," continued Whitney, still confidential, "we haven't got the
+dagger--that's all. There--I never actually asserted that before,
+though I've given every one to understand that our plans are based on
+something more than hot-air. We haven't got it, and we never had it."
+
+"Then who has it?" asked Kennedy colourlessly.
+
+Whitney shook his head. "I don't know," he said merely.
+
+"And these attacks on you--this cigarette business--how do you explain
+that," asked Craig, "if you haven't the dagger?"
+
+"Jealousy, pure jealousy," replied Whitney quickly. "They are so afraid
+that we will find the treasure. That's my dope."
+
+"Who is afraid?"
+
+"That's a serious matter," he evaded. "I wouldn't say anything that I
+couldn't back up in a case of that kind. I'd get into trouble."
+
+There was nothing to be gained by prolonging the conversation and
+Kennedy made a move as though to go.
+
+"Just give us a square deal," said Whitney as we left. "That's all we
+want--a square deal."
+
+Kennedy and I walked out of the Prince Edward Albert and turned down
+the block.
+
+"Well, have you found out anything more?" asked a voice in the shadow
+beside us.
+
+We turned. It was Norton.
+
+"I saw you talking to Whitney in the writing-room," he said, with a
+laugh, "then in the cafe, and I saw Alfonso come in. He still has those
+shadows on me. I wouldn't be surprised if there was one of them around
+in a doorway, now."
+
+"No," returned Kennedy, "he didn't say anything that was important.
+They still say they haven't the dagger."
+
+"Of course," said Norton.
+
+"You'll wait around a little longer?" asked Kennedy as we came to a
+corner and stopped.
+
+"I think so," returned Norton. "I'll keep you posted."
+
+Kennedy and I walked on a bit.
+
+"I'm going around to see how Burke, O'Connor's man, is getting on
+watching the Mendoza apartment, Walter," he said at length. "Then I
+have two or three other little outside matters to attend to. You look
+tired. Why don't you go home and take a rest? I shan't be working in
+the laboratory to-night, either."
+
+"I think I will," I agreed, for the strain of the case was beginning to
+tell on me.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE PULMOTOR
+
+
+I went directly to our apartment after Craig left me and for a little
+while sat up, speculating on the probabilities of the case.
+
+Senora de Moche had told us of her ancestor who had been intrusted with
+the engraved dagger, of how it had been handed down, of the death of
+her brother; she had told us of the murder of the ancestor of Inez
+Mendoza, of the curse of Mansiche. Was this, after all, but a
+reincarnation of the bloody history of the Gold of the Gods?
+
+There were the shoe-prints in the mummy case. They were Lockwood's. How
+about them? Was he telling the truth? Now had come the poisoned
+cigarettes. All had followed the threats:
+
+BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE GODS.
+
+Several times I had been forced already to revise my theories of the
+case. At first I had felt that it pointed straight toward Lockwood. But
+did it seem to do so now?
+
+Suppose Lockwood had stolen the dagger from the Museum, although he
+denied even that. Did that mean, necessarily that he committed the
+murder with it, that he now had it? Might he not have lost it? Might
+not some one else--the Senora, or Alfonso, or both--have obtained it?
+Might not Mendoza have been murdered with it by some other hand to
+obtain or to hide the secret on its bloody blade?
+
+I went to bed, still thinking, no nearer a conclusion than before,
+prepared to dream over it.
+
+That is the last I remember.
+
+When I regained consciousness, I was lying on the bed still, but Craig
+was bending over me. He had just taken a rubber cap off my face, to
+which was attached a rubber tube that ran to a box perhaps as large as
+a suitcase, containing a pump of some kind.
+
+I was too weak to notice these things right away, too weak to care much
+about them, or about anything else.
+
+"Are you all right now, old man?" he asked, bending over me.
+
+"Y-Yes," I gasped, clutching at the choking sensation in my throat.
+"What has happened?"
+
+Perhaps I had best tell it as though I were not the chief actor; for it
+came to me in such disjointed fragmentary form, that it was some time
+before I could piece it together.
+
+Craig had seen Burke, and had found that everything was all right. Then
+he had made the few little investigations that he intended. But he had
+not been to the laboratory. There had been no light there that night.
+
+At last when he arrived home, he had found a peculiar odour in the
+hall, but had thought nothing of it, until he opened our door. Then
+there rushed out such a burst of it that he had to retreat, almost
+fainting, choking and gasping for breath.
+
+His first thought was for me; and protecting himself as best he could
+he struggled through to my room, to find me lying on the bed,
+motionless, almost cold.
+
+He was by this time too weak to carry me. But he managed to reach the
+window and throw it wide open. As the draught cleared the air, he
+thought of the telephone and with barely strength enough left called up
+one of the gas companies and had a pulmotor sent over.
+
+Now that the danger was past for me, and he felt all right, his active
+mind began at once on the reconstruction of what had happened.
+
+What was it--man or devil? Could a human fly have scaled the walls, or
+an aeroplane have dropped an intruder at the window ledge? The lock on
+the door did not seem to have been tampered with. Nor was there any way
+by which entrance could have been gained from a fire escape. It was not
+illuminating gas. Every one agreed on that. No, it was not an accident.
+It was an attempt at murder. Some one was getting close to us. Every
+other weapon failing, this was desperation.
+
+I had been made comfortable, and he was engaged in one of his
+characteristic searches, with more than ordinary eagerness, because
+this was his own apartment, and it was I who had been the victim.
+
+I followed him languidly as he went over everything, the furniture, the
+walls, the windows, the carpets--there looking for finger-prints, there
+for some trace of the poisonous gas that had filled the room. But he
+did not have the air of one who was finding anything. I was too tired
+to reason. This was but another of the baffling mysteries that
+confronted us.
+
+A low exclamation caused me to open my eyes and try to discover what
+was the cause. He was bending over the lock of the door looking at it
+intently.
+
+"Broken?" I managed to say.
+
+"No--corroded," he replied. "You keep still. Save your energy. I've got
+strength enough for two, for a while."
+
+He came over to the bed and bent over me. "I won't hurt you," he
+encouraged, "but just let me get a drop of your blood."
+
+He took a needle and ran it gently into my thumb beside the nail. A
+drop or two of blood oozed out and he soaked it up with a piece of
+sterile gauze.
+
+"Try to sleep," he said finally.
+
+"And you?" I asked.
+
+"It's no use. I'm going over to the laboratory. I can't sleep. There's
+a cop down in front of the house. You're safe enough. By George, if
+this case goes much further we'll have half the force standing guard.
+Here--drink that."
+
+I had made up my mind not to go to sleep, if he wouldn't, but I slipped
+up when I obeyed him that time. I thought it was a stimulant but it
+turned out to be a sedative.
+
+I did not wake up until well along in the morning, but when I did I was
+surprised to find myself so well. Before any one could stop me, I was
+dressed and had reached the door.
+
+A friend of ours who had volunteered to stay with me was dozing on a
+couch as I came out.
+
+"Too late, Johnson," I called, trying hard to be gay, though I felt
+anything but like it. "Thank you, old man, for staying with me. But I'm
+afraid to stop. You're stronger than I am this morning--and besides you
+can run faster. I'm afraid you'll drag me back."
+
+He did try to do it, but with a great effort of will-power I persuaded
+him to let me go. Out in the open air, too, it seemed to do me good.
+The policeman who had been stationed before the house gazed at me as
+though he saw a ghost, then grinned encouragingly.
+
+Still, I was glad that the laboratory was only a few blocks away, for I
+was all in by the time I got there, and hadn't even energy enough to
+reply to Kennedy's scolding.
+
+He was working over a microscope, while by his side stood in racks,
+innumerable test-tubes of various liquids. On the table before him lay
+the lock of our door which he had cut out after he gave me the sleeping
+draught.
+
+"What was it?" I asked. "I feel as if I had been on a bust, without the
+recollection of a thing."
+
+He shook his head as if to discourage conversation, without taking his
+eyes off the microscope through which he was squinting. His lips were
+moving as if he were counting. I waited in impatient silence until he
+seemed to have finished.
+
+Then, still without a word, he took up a test-tube and dropped into it
+a little liquid from a bottle on a shelf above the table. His face
+lighted up, and he regarded the reaction attentively for some time.
+Then he turned to me, still holding the tube.
+
+"You have been on a bust," he said with a smile as if the remark of a
+few minutes before were still fresh. "Only it was a laughing gas
+jag--nitrous oxide."
+
+"Nitrous oxide?" I repeated. "How--what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean simply that a test of your blood shows that you were poisoned
+by nitrous oxide gas. You remember the sample of blood which I squeezed
+from your thumb? I took it because I knew that a gas--and it has proved
+to be nitrous oxide--is absorbed through the lungs into the circulation
+and its presence can be told for a considerable period after
+administration."
+
+He paused a moment, then went on: "To be specific in this case I found
+by microscopic examination that the number of corpuscles in your blood
+was vastly above the normal, something like between seven and eight
+million to a drop that should have had somewhat more than only half
+that number. You were poisoned by gas that--"
+
+"Yes," I interrupted, "but how, with all the doors locked?"
+
+"I was coming to that," he said quietly, picking up the lock and
+looking at it thoughtfully.
+
+He had already placed it in a porcelain basin, and in this basin he had
+poured some liquids. Then he passed the liquids through a fine screen
+and at last took up a tube containing some of the resulting liquid.
+
+"I have already satisfied myself," he explained, "but for your benefit,
+seeing that you're the chief sufferer, I'll run over a part of the
+test. You saw the reaction which showed the gas a moment ago. I have
+proved chemically as well as microscopically that it is present in your
+blood. Now if I take this test-tube of liquid derived from my treatment
+of the lock and then test it as you saw me do with the other, isn't
+that enough for you? See--it gives the same reaction."
+
+It did, indeed, but my mind did not react with it.
+
+"Nitrous oxide," he continued, "in contact with iron, leaves distinct
+traces of corrosion, discernible by chemical and microscopic tests
+quite as well as the marks it leaves in the human blood. Manifestly, if
+no one could have come in by the windows or doors, the gas must have
+been administered in some way without any one coming into the room. I
+found no traces of an intruder."
+
+It was a tough one. Never much good at answering his conundrums when I
+was well, I could not even make a guess now.
+
+"The key-hole, of course!" he explained. "I cut away the entire lock,
+and have submitted it to these tests which you see."
+
+"I don't see it all yet," I said.
+
+"Some one came to our door in the night, after gaining entrance to the
+hall--not a difficult thing to do, we know. That person found our door
+locked, knew it would be locked, knew that I always locked it. Knowing
+that such was the case, this person came prepared, bringing perhaps, a
+tank of compressed nitrous oxide, certainly the materials for making
+the gas expeditiously."
+
+I began to understand how it had been done.
+
+"Through the keyhole," he resumed, "a stream of the gas was injected.
+It soon rendered you unconscious, and that would have been all, if the
+person had been satisfied. A little bit would have been harmless
+enough. But the person was not satisfied. The intention was not to
+overcome, but to kill. The stream of gas was kept up until the room was
+full of it.
+
+"Only my return saved you, for the gas was escaping very slowly. Even
+then, you had been under it so long that we had to resort to the
+wonderful little pulmotor after trying both the Sylvester and Schaefer
+methods and all other manual means to induce respiration. At any rate
+we managed to undo the work of this fiend."
+
+I looked at him in surprise, I, who didn't think I had an enemy in the
+world.
+
+"But who could it have been?" I asked.
+
+"We are pretty close to that criminal," was the only reply he would
+give, "providing we do not spread the net in sight of the quarry."
+
+"Why should he have wanted to get me?" I repeated.
+
+"Don't flatter yourself," replied Craig. "He wanted me, too. There
+wasn't any light in the laboratory last night. There was a light in our
+apartment. What more natural than to think that we were both there? You
+were caught in the trap intended for both of us."
+
+I looked at him, startled. Surely this was a most desperate criminal.
+To cover up one murder--perhaps two--he did not hesitate to attempt a
+third, a double murder. The attack had been really aimed at Kennedy. It
+had struck me alone. But it had miscarried and Craig had saved my life.
+
+As I reflected bitterly, I had but one satisfaction. Wretched as I
+felt, I knew that it had spared Craig from slowing up on the case at
+just the time when he was needed.
+
+The news of the attempt spread quickly, for it was a police case and
+got into the papers.
+
+It was not half an hour after I reached the laboratory that the door
+was pushed open by Inez Mendoza, followed by a boy spilling with fruit
+and flowers like a cornucopia.
+
+"I drove to the apartment," she cried, greatly excited and sympathetic,
+"but they told me you had gone out. Oh, I was glad to hear it. Then I
+knew it wasn't so serious. For, somehow, I feel guilty about it. It
+never would have happened if you hadn't met me."
+
+"I'm sure it's worth more than it cost," I replied gallantly.
+
+She turned toward Kennedy. "I'm positively frightened," she exclaimed.
+"First they direct their attacks against my father--then against
+me--now against you. What will it be next? Oh--it is that curse--it is
+that curse!"
+
+"Never fear," encouraged Kennedy, "we'll get you out--we'll get all of
+us out, now, I should say. It's just because they are so desperate that
+we have these things. As long as there is nothing to fear a criminal
+will lie low. When he gets scared he does things. And it's when he does
+things that he begins to betray himself."
+
+She shuddered. "I feel as though I was surrounded by enemies," she
+murmured. "It is as if an unseen evil power was watching over me all
+the time--and mocking me--striking down those I love and trust. Where
+will it end?"
+
+Kennedy tried his best to soothe her, but it was evident that the
+attack on us could not have had more effect, if it had been levelled
+direct at her.
+
+"Please, Senorita," he pleaded, "stand firm. We are going to win. Don't
+give in. The Mendozas are not the kind to stop defeated."
+
+She looked at him, her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"It was my father's way," she choked back her emotion. "How could you,
+a stranger, know?"
+
+"I didn't know," returned Kennedy. "I gathered it from his face. It is
+also his daughter's way."
+
+"Yes," she said, straightening up and the fire flashing from her eyes,
+"we are a proud, old, unbending race. Good-bye. I must not interrupt
+your work any longer. We are also a race that never forgets a friend."
+
+A moment later she was gone.
+
+"A wonderful woman," repeated Kennedy absently.
+
+Then he turned again to his table of chemicals.
+
+The telephone had begun to tinkle almost continuously by this time, as
+one after another of our friends called us up to know how we were
+getting on and be assured of our safety. In fact I didn't know that it
+was possible to resuscitate so many of them with a pulmotor.
+
+"By George, I'm glad it wasn't any more serious," came Norton's voice
+from the doorway a moment later. "I didn't see a paper this morning.
+The curator of the Museum just told me. How did it happen?"
+
+Kennedy tried to pass it off lightly, and I did the same, for as I was
+up longer I really did feel better.
+
+Norton shook his head gravely, however.
+
+"No," he said, "there were four of us got warnings. They are a
+desperate, revengeful people."
+
+I looked at him quickly. Did he mean the de Moches?
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+THE TELESCRIBE
+
+
+I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and that I had
+better go slow that day and regain my strength, a fortunate decision,
+as it turned out.
+
+Kennedy, also, spent most of the time in the laboratory, so that, after
+all, I did not feel that I was missing very much.
+
+It was along in the afternoon that the telephone began acting
+strangely, as it will do sometimes when a long distance connection is
+being made. Twice Kennedy answered, without getting any response.
+
+"Confound that central," he muttered. "What do you suppose is the
+matter?"
+
+Again the bell rang.
+
+"Hello," shouted Kennedy, exasperated. "Who's this?"
+
+There was a pause. "Just a minute," he replied.
+
+Quickly he jammed the receiver down on a little metal base which he had
+placed near the instrument. Three prongs reaching upward from the base
+engaged the receiver tightly, fitting closely about it.
+
+Then he took up a watch-case receiver to listen through in place of the
+regular receiver.
+
+"Who is it?" he answered.
+
+Apparently the voice at the other end of the wire replied rather
+peevishly, for Kennedy endeavoured to smooth over the delay. I wondered
+what was going on, why he was so careful. His face showed that,
+whatever it was, it was most important.
+
+As he restored the telephone to its normal condition, he looked at me
+puzzled.
+
+"I wonder whether that was a frame-up!" he exclaimed, pulling a little
+cylinder off the instrument into which he had inserted the telephone
+receiver. "I thought it might be and I have preserved the voice. This
+is what is known as the telescribe--a recent invention of Edison which
+records on a specially prepared phonograph cylinder all that is
+said--both ways--over a telephone wire."
+
+"What was it about?" I asked eagerly.
+
+He shoved the cylinder on a phonograph and started the instrument.
+
+"Professor Kennedy?" called an unfamiliar voice.
+
+"Yes," answered a voice that I recognized as Craig's.
+
+"This is the detective agency employed by Mr. Whitney. He has
+instructed us to inform you that he has obtained the Peruvian dagger
+for which you have been searching. That's all. Good-bye."
+
+I looked at Kennedy in blank surprise.
+
+"They rang off before I could ask them a question," said Craig.
+"Central tells me it was a pay station call. There doesn't seem to be
+any way of tracing it. But, at least I have a record of the voice."
+
+"What are you going to do?" I queried. "It may be a fake."
+
+"Yes, but I'm going to investigate it. Do you feel strong enough to go
+down to Whitney's with me?"
+
+The startling news had been like a tonic. "Of course," I replied,
+seizing my hat.
+
+Kennedy paused only long enough to call Norton. The archaeologist was
+out, and we hurried on downtown to Whitney's.
+
+Whitney was not there and his clerk was just about to close the office.
+All the books were put away in the safe and the desks were closed. Now
+and then there echoed up the hall the clang of an elevator door.
+
+"Where is Mr. Whitney?" demanded Craig of the clerk.
+
+"I can't say. He went out a couple of hours ago."
+
+"Did he have a visit from one of his detectives?" shot out Craig
+suddenly.
+
+The clerk looked up suspiciously at us.
+
+"No," he replied defiantly.
+
+"Walter--stand by that door," shouted Craig. "Let no one in until they
+break it down."
+
+His blue-steel automatic gleamed a cold menace at the clerk. A downtown
+office after office hours is not exactly the place to which one can get
+assistance quickly. The clerk started back.
+
+"Did he have a visit from one of his detectives?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What was it about?"
+
+The clerk winced. "I don't know," he replied, "honest--I don't."
+
+Craig waved the gun for emphasis. "Open the safe," he said.
+
+Reluctantly the clerk obeyed. Under the point of the gun he searched
+every compartment and drawer of the big chrome steel strong-box which
+Whitney had pointed out as the safest place for the dagger on our first
+visit to him. But there was absolutely no trace of it. Had we been
+hoaxed and was all this risk in vain?
+
+"Where did Mr. Whitney go?" demanded Craig, as he directed the clerk to
+shut the door and lock the safe again, baffled.
+
+"If I should try to tell you," returned the man, very much frightened,
+"I would be lying. You would soon find out. Mr. Whitney doesn't make a
+confidant of me, you know."
+
+It was useless. If he had the dagger, at least we knew that it was not
+at the office. We had learned only one thing. He had had a visit from
+one of his detectives.
+
+As fast as the uptown trend of automobiles and surface cars during the
+rush hour would permit, Kennedy and I hurried in a taxicab to the
+Prince Edward Albert in the hope of surprising him there.
+
+"It's no use to inquire for him," decided Craig as we entered the
+hotel. "I still have the key to that room, 827, next to his. We'll ride
+right up in the elevator boldly and get in."
+
+No one said anything to us, as we let ourselves into the room next to
+Whitney's. A new lock had been placed on the door between the suites,
+but, aside from the additional time it took to force it, it presented
+no great difficulty.
+
+"He wouldn't leave the dagger here, of course," remarked Kennedy, as at
+last we stepped into Whitney's suite. "But we may as well satisfy
+ourselves. Hello--what's this?"
+
+The room was all upset, as though some one had already gone through it.
+For a moment I thought we had been forestalled.
+
+"Packed a grip hastily," Craig remarked, pointing to the marks on the
+bedspread where it had rested while he must literally have thrown
+things into it.
+
+We made a hasty search ourselves, but we knew it was hopeless. Two
+things we had learned. Whitney had had a visit from his detectives, and
+he had gone away hurriedly. An anonymous telephone message had been
+sent to Kennedy. Had it been for the purpose of throwing us off the
+track?
+
+The room telephone rang. Quickly Craig jumped to it and took down the
+receiver.
+
+"Hello," he called. "Yes, this is Mr. Whitney."
+
+A silence ensued during which, of course, I could not gather any idea
+of what was going on over the wire.
+
+"The deuce!" exclaimed Kennedy, working the hook up and down but
+receiving no response. "The fellow caught on. Something must have
+happened to Norton, too."
+
+"How's that?" I asked.
+
+"Why," he replied, "some one just called up Whitney and said that
+Norton had got away from him."
+
+"Perhaps they're trying to keep him out of the way just as they are
+with us," I suggested. "I think the thing is a plant."
+
+Down the hall, Kennedy stopped and tapped lightly at the door of 810,
+the de Moche suite. I think he was surprised when the Senora's maid
+opened it.
+
+"Tell Senora de Moche it is Professor Kennedy," he said quickly, "and
+that I must see her."
+
+The maid admitted us into the sitting-room where we had had our first
+interview with her and a moment later she appeared. She was evidently
+not dressed for dinner, although it was almost time, and I saw
+Kennedy's eye travel from her to a chair in the corner over which was
+draped a linen automobile coat and a heavy veil. Had she been preparing
+to go somewhere, too? The door to Alfonso's room was open and he
+clearly was not there. What did it all mean?
+
+"Have you heard anything of a report that the dagger has been found?"
+demanded Kennedy abruptly.
+
+"Why--no," she replied, greatly surprised, apparently.
+
+"You were going out?" asked Kennedy with a significant glance at the
+coat and veil.
+
+"Only for a little ride with Alfonso, who has gone to hire a car," she
+answered quickly.
+
+I felt sure that she had heard something about the dagger.
+
+We had no further excuse for staying and on the way out, now that he
+had satisfied himself that Whitney was not there, Craig inquired at the
+office for him. They could tell us nothing of his whereabouts, except
+that he had left in his car late in the afternoon in a great hurry.
+
+Kennedy stepped into a telephone booth and called up Lockwood, but no
+one answered. Inquiry in the garages in the neighbourhood finally
+located that at which Lockwood kept his car. There, all that they could
+tell us was that the car had been filled with gas and oil as if for a
+trip. Lockwood was gone, too.
+
+Kennedy hastily ordered a touring car himself and placed it at a corner
+of the Prince Edward Albert where he could watch two of the entrances,
+while I waited on the next corner where I could see the entrance on the
+other street.
+
+For some time we waited and still she did not come out. Had she
+telephoned to Alfonso and had he gone alone? Perhaps she had already
+been out and had taken this method of detaining us, knowing that we
+would wait to watch her.
+
+It must have been a mixture of both motives, for at length I was
+rewarded by seeing her come cautiously out of the rear entrance of the
+hotel alone and start to walk hurriedly up the street. I signalled to
+Craig who shot down and picked me up.
+
+By this time the Senora had reached a public cab stand and had engaged
+a hack.
+
+Sinking back in the shadows of the top, which was up, Craig directed
+our driver to follow the hack cautiously, keeping a couple of blocks
+behind. There was some satisfaction, though slight, in it, at least. We
+felt the possibility of the trail leading somewhere, now.
+
+On uptown the hack went, while we kept discreetly in the rear. We had
+reached a part of the city where it was sparsely populated, when the
+hack suddenly turned and doubled back on us.
+
+There was not time for us to turn and we trusted that by shrinking back
+in the shadow we might not be observed.
+
+As the hack passed us, however, the Senora leaned out until it was
+perfectly evident that she must recognize us. She said nothing but I
+fancied I saw a smile of satisfaction as she settled back into the
+cushions. She was deliberately going back along the very road by which
+she had led us out. It had been an elaborate means of wasting our time.
+
+She did not have the satisfaction, however, of shaking us off, for we
+followed all the way back to the hotel and saw her go in. Then Kennedy
+placed the car where we had it before and left the driver with
+instructions to follow her regardless of time if she should come out
+again.
+
+Surely, I reasoned, there must be something very queer going on, if
+they were all in it to eliminate us and Norton. What had happened to him?
+
+Kennedy hastened back to the campus, late as it was, there to start
+anew. Norton was not in his quarters and, on the chance that he might
+have sought to elude Whitney's detectives by doing the unexpected and
+going to the Museum, Kennedy walked over that way.
+
+There was nothing to indicate that anybody had been at the Museum, but,
+as we passed our laboratory, we could hear the telephone ringing
+inside, as though some one had been trying to get us for a long time.
+
+Kennedy opened the door and switched on the lights. Waiting only long
+enough to jam the receiver down into place on the telescribe, he
+answered the call.
+
+"The deuce you will!" I heard him exclaim, then apparently whoever was
+talking rang off and he could not get them back.
+
+"Another of those confounded telephone messages," he said, turning to
+me and taking the cylinder off. "It looks as though the ready-letter
+writer who used to send warnings had learned his lesson and taken to
+the telephone as leaving fewer clues than handwriting."
+
+He placed the record on the phonograph so that I could hear it. It was
+brief and to the point, as had been the first.
+
+"Hello, is that you, Kennedy? We've got Norton. Next we'll get you.
+Good-bye."
+
+Kennedy repeated the first message. It was evident that both had been
+spoken by the same voice.
+
+"Whose is it?" I asked blankly. "What does it mean?"
+
+Before Craig could answer there was a knock at our door and he sprang
+to open it.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE VANISHER
+
+
+It was Juanita, Inez Mendoza's maid, frantic and almost speechless.
+
+"Why, Juanita," encouraged Kennedy, "what's the matter?"
+
+"The Senorita!" she gasped, breaking down now and sobbing over and over
+again. "The Senorita!"
+
+"Yes, yes," repeated Kennedy, "but what about her? Is there anything
+wrong?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Kennedy," sobbed the poor girl, "I don't know. She is gone. I
+have had no word from her since this afternoon."
+
+"Gone!" we exclaimed together. "Where was Burke--that man that the
+police sent up to protect her?"
+
+"He is gone, too--now," replied Juanita in her best English, sadly
+broken by the excitement.
+
+Kennedy and I looked at each other aghast. This was the hardest blow of
+all. We had thought that, at least, Inez would be safe with a man like
+Burke, whom we could trust, detailed to watch her.
+
+"Tell me," urged Kennedy, "how did it happen? Did they carry her
+off--as they tried to do the other time?"
+
+"No, no," sobbed Juanita. "I do not know. I do not know even whether
+she is gone. She went out this afternoon for a little walk. But she did
+not come back. After it grew dark, I was frightened. I remembered that
+you were here and called up, but you were out. Then I saw that
+policeman. I told him. He has others working with him now. But I could
+not find you--until now I saw a light here. Oh, my poor, little girl,
+what has become of her? Where have they taken her? Oh, MADRE DE DIOS,
+it is terrible!"
+
+Had that been the purpose for which we had been sent on wild-goose
+chases? Was Inez really kidnapped this time? I knew not what to think.
+It seemed hardly possible that all of them could have joined in it.
+
+If she were kidnapped, it must have been on the street in broad
+daylight. Such things had happened. It would not be the first
+disappearance of the kind.
+
+Quickly Kennedy called up Deputy O'Connor. It was only too true. Burke
+had reported that she had disappeared and the police, especially those
+at the stations and ferries and in the suburbs had been notified to
+look for her. All this seemed to have taken place in those hours when
+the mysterious telephone calls had sent us on the wrong trail.
+
+Kennedy said nothing, but I could see that he was doing some keen
+thinking.
+
+Just then the telephone rang again. It was from the man whom we had
+left at the Prince Edward Albert. Senora de Moche had gone out and
+driven rapidly to the Grand Central. He had not been able to find out
+what ticket she bought, but the train was just leaving.
+
+Kennedy paced up and down, muttering to himself. "Whitney first--then
+Lockwood--and Alfonso. The Senora takes a train. Suppose the first
+message were true? Gas and oil for a trip."
+
+He seized the telephone book and hastily turned the pages over. At last
+his finger rested on a name in the suburban section. I read: "Whitney,
+Stuart. Res. 174-J Rockledge."
+
+Quickly he gave central the number, then shoved the receiver again into
+the telescribe.
+
+"Hello, is Mr. Whitney there?" I heard later as he placed the record
+again in the phonograph for repetition.
+
+"No--who is this?"
+
+"His head clerk. Tell him I must see him. Kennedy has been to the
+office and--"
+
+"Say--get off the line. We had that story once."
+
+"That's it!" exclaimed Craig. "Don't you see--they've all gone up to
+Whitney's country place. That clerk was faking. He has already
+telephoned. And listen. Do you see anything peculiar?"
+
+He was running all three records which we had on the telescribe. As he
+did so, I saw unmistakably that it was the same voice on all three.
+Whitney must have had a servant do the telephoning for him.
+
+"Don't fret, Juanita," reassured Kennedy. "We shall find your mistress
+for you. She will be all right. You had better go back to the apartment
+and wait. Walter look up the next train to Rockledge while I telephone
+O'Connor."
+
+We had an hour to wait before the next train left and in the meantime
+we drove Juanita back to the Mendoza apartment.
+
+It was a short run to Rockledge by railroad, but it seemed to me that
+it took hours. Kennedy sat in silence most of the time, his eyes
+closed, as if he were trying to place himself in the position of the
+others and figure out what they would do.
+
+At last we arrived, the only passengers to get off at the little old
+station. Which way to turn we had not the slightest idea. We looked
+about. Even the ticket office was closed. It looked as though we might
+almost as well have stayed in New York.
+
+Down the railroad we could see that a great piece of engineering was in
+progress, raising the level of the tracks and building a steel viaduct,
+as well as a new station, and at the same time not interrupting the
+through traffic, which was heavy.
+
+"Surely there must be some one down there," observed Kennedy, as we
+picked our way across the steel girders, piles of rails, and around
+huge machines for mixing concrete.
+
+We came at last to a little construction house, a sort of general
+machine-and work-shop, in which seemed to be everything from a file to
+a pneumatic riveter.
+
+"Hello!" shouted Craig.
+
+There came a sound from a far corner of a pile of ties and a moment
+later a night-watchman advanced suspiciously swinging his lantern.
+
+"Hello yourself," he growled.
+
+"Which way to Stuart Whitney's estate?" asked Craig.
+
+My heart sank as he gave the directions. It seemed miles away.
+
+Just then the blinding lights of a car flashed on us as it came down
+the road parallel to the tracks. He waved his light and the car
+stopped. It was empty, except for a chauffeur evidently returning from
+a joy ride.
+
+"Take these gentlemen as far as Smith's corner, will you?" asked the
+watchman. "Then show 'em the turn up to Whitney's."
+
+The chauffeur was an obliging chap, especially as it cost him nothing
+to earn a substantial tip with his master's car. However, we were glad
+enough to ride in anything on wheels, and not over-particular at that
+hour about the ownership.
+
+"Mr. Whitney hasn't been out here much lately," he volunteered as he
+sped along the beautiful oiled road, and the lights cast shadows on the
+trees that made driving as easy as in daylight.
+
+"No, he has been very busy," returned Craig glad to turn to account the
+opportunity to talk with a chauffeur, for it is the chauffeur in the
+country who is the purveyor of all knowledge and gossip.
+
+"His car passed us when I was driving up from the city. My boss won't
+let me speed or I wouldn't have taken his dust. Gee, but he does wear
+out the engines in his cars, Whitney."
+
+"Was he alone?" asked Craig.
+
+"Yes--and then I saw him driving back again when I went down, to the
+station for some new shoes we had expressed up. Just a flying trip, I
+guess--or does he expect you?"
+
+"I don't think he does," returned Craig truthfully.
+
+"I saw a couple of other cars go up there. House party?"
+
+"Maybe you'd call it that," returned Craig with a twinkle of the eye.
+"Did you see any ladies?"
+
+"No," returned the chauffeur. "Just a man driving his own car and
+another with a driver."
+
+"There wasn't a lady with Mr. Whitney?" asked Craig, now rather anxious.
+
+"Neither time."
+
+I saw what he was driving at. The Senora might have got up there in any
+fashion without being noticed. But for Inez not to be with Whitney, nor
+with the two who must evidently have been Lockwood and Alfonso, was
+indeed strange. Could it be that we were only half right--that they had
+gathered here but that Inez had really disappeared?
+
+The young man set us down at Smith's Corner and it proved to be only
+about an eighth of a mile up the road and up-hill when Whitney's house
+burst in sight, silhouetted against the sky.
+
+There were lights there and it was evident that several people had
+gathered for some purpose.
+
+We made our way up the path and paused a moment to look through the
+window before springing the little surprise. There we could see
+Lockwood, Alfonso, and Senora de Moche, who had arrived, after all and
+probably been met at the station by her son. They seemed like anything
+but a happy party. Never on the best of terms, they could not be
+expected to be happy. But now, if ever, one would have thought they
+might do more than tolerate each other, assuming that some common
+purpose had brought them here.
+
+Kennedy rang the bell and we could see that all looked surprised, for
+they had heard no car approach. A servant opened the door and before he
+knew it, Kennedy had pushed past him, taking no chances at a rebuff
+after the experience over the wire.
+
+"Kennedy!" exclaimed Lockwood and Alfonso together.
+
+"Where is Inez Mendoza?" demanded Craig, without returning the greeting.
+
+"Inez?" they repeated blankly.
+
+Kennedy faced them squarely.
+
+"Come, now. Where is she? This is a show-down. You may as well lay your
+cards on the table. Where is she--what have you done with her?"
+
+The de Moches looked at Lockwood and he looked at them, but neither
+spoke for a moment.
+
+"Walter," ordered Kennedy, "there's the telephone. Get the managing
+editor of the Star and tell him where we are. Every newspaper in the
+United States, every police officer in every city will have the story,
+in twelve hours, if you precious rascals don't come across. There--I
+give you until central gets die Star."
+
+"Why--what has happened?" asked Lockwood, who was the first to recover
+his tongue.
+
+"Don't stand there asking me what has happened," cried Kennedy
+impatiently. "Tickle that hook again, Walter. You know as well as I do
+that you have planned to get Inez Mendoza away from my influence--to
+kidnap her, in other words--"
+
+"We kidnap her?" gasped Lockwood. "What do you mean, man? I know
+nothing of this. Is she gone?" He wheeled on the de Moches. "This is
+some of your work. If anything happens to that girl--there isn't an
+Indian feud can equal the vengeance I will take!"
+
+Alfonso was absolutely speechless. Senora de Moche started to speak,
+but Kennedy interrupted her. "That will do from you," he cut short.
+"You have passed beyond the bounds of politeness when you deliberately
+went out of your way to throw me on a wrong trail while some one was
+making off with a young and innocent girl. You are a woman of the
+world. You will take your medicine like a man, too."
+
+I don't think I have ever seen Kennedy in a more towering rage than he
+was at that moment.
+
+"When it was only a matter of a paltry poisoned dagger at stake and a
+fortune that may be mythical or may be like that of Croesus, for all I
+care, we could play the game according to rules," he exclaimed. "But
+when you begin to tamper with a life like that of Inez de Mendoza--you
+have passed the bounds of all consideration. You have the Star?
+Telephone the story anyhow. We'll arbitrate afterward."
+
+I think, as I related the facts to my editor, it sobered us all a great
+deal.
+
+"Kennedy," appealed Lockwood at last, as I hung up the receiver, "will
+you listen to my story?"
+
+"It is what I am here for," replied Craig grimly.
+
+"Believe it or not, as far as I am concerned," asserted Lockwood, "this
+is all news to me. My God--where is she?"
+
+"Then how came you here?" demanded Craig.
+
+"I can speak only for myself," hastened Lockwood. "If you had asked
+where Whitney was, I could have understood, but--"
+
+"Well, where is he?"
+
+"We don't know. Early this afternoon I received a hurried message from
+him--at least I suppose it was from him--that he had the dagger and was
+up here. He said--I'll be perfectly frank--he said that he was
+arranging a conference at which all of us were to be present to decide
+what to do."
+
+"Meanwhile I was to be kept away at any cost," supplied Kennedy
+sarcastically. "Where did he get it?"
+
+"He didn't say."
+
+"And you didn't care, as long as he had it," added Craig, then, turning
+to the de Moches, "And what is your tale?"
+
+Senora de Moche did not lose her self-possession for an instant. "We
+received the same message. When you called, I thought it would be best
+for Alfonso to go alone, so I telephoned and caught him at the garage
+and when my train arrived here, he was waiting."
+
+"None of you have seen Whitney here?" asked Kennedy, to which all
+nodded in the negative. "Well, you seem to agree pretty well in your
+stories, anyhow. Let me take a chance with the servants."
+
+It is no easy matter to go into another's household and without any
+official position quiz and expect to get the truth out of the servants.
+But Kennedy's very wrath seemed to awe them. They answered in spite of
+themselves.
+
+It seemed clear that as far as they went both guests and servants were
+telling the truth. Whitney had made the run up from the city earlier in
+the afternoon, had stayed only a short time, then had gone back,
+leaving word that he would be there again before his guests arrived.
+
+They all professed to be as mystified as ourselves now over the outcome
+of the whole affair. He had not come back and there had been no word
+from him.
+
+"One thing is certain," remarked Craig, watching the faces before him
+as he spoke. "Inez is gone. She has been spirited away without even
+leaving a trace. Her maid Juanita told me that. Now if Whitney is gone,
+too, it looks as if he had planned to double-cross the whole crowd of
+you and leave you safely marooned up here with nothing left but your
+common hatred of me. Much good may it do you."
+
+Lockwood clenched his fists savagely, not at Kennedy but at the thought
+that Craig had suggested. His face set itself in tense lines as he
+swore vengeance on all jointly and severally if any harm came to Inez.
+I almost forgot my suspicions of him in admiration.
+
+"Nothing like this would ever have happened if she had stayed in Peru,"
+exclaimed Alfonso bitterly. "Oh, why did her father ever bring her here
+to this land of danger?"
+
+The idea seemed novel to me to look on America as a lawless, uncultured
+country, until I reflected on the usual Latin-American opinion of us as
+barbarians.
+
+Lockwood frowned but said nothing, for a time. Then he turned suddenly
+to the Senora, "You were intimate enough with him," he said. "Did he
+tell you any more than he told us?"
+
+It was clear that Lockwood felt now that every man's hand was against
+him.
+
+I thought I could discover a suppressed gleam of satisfaction in her
+wonderful eyes as she answered, "Nothing more. It was only that I
+carried out what he asked me."
+
+Could it be that she was taking a subtle delight in the turn of
+events--the working out of a curse on the treasure-secret which the
+fatal dagger bore? I could not say. But it would not have needed much
+superstition to convince any one that the curse on the Gold of the Gods
+was as genuine as any that had ever been uttered, as it heaped up crime
+on crime.
+
+We waited in silence, the more hopeless as the singing of the night
+insects italicized our isolation from the organized instruments of man
+for the righting of wrong. Here we were, each suspecting the other, in
+the home of a man whom all mistrusted.
+
+"There's no use sitting here doing nothing," exclaimed Lockwood in
+whose mind was evidently the same thought, "not so long as we have the
+telephone and the automobiles."
+
+These, at least, were our last bonds with the great world that had
+wrapped a dark night about a darker mystery.
+
+"There are many miles of wire--many miles of road. Which way shall we
+turn?"
+
+Senora de Moche seemed to take a fiendish delight in the words as she
+said them. It was as though she challenged our helplessness in the face
+of a power that was greater than us all.
+
+Lockwood flashed a look of suspicion in her direction. As for myself, I
+had never been able to make the woman out. To-night she seemed like a
+sort of dea ex machina, who sat apart, playing on the passions of a
+group of puppet men whom she set against each other until all should be
+involved in a common ruin.
+
+It was impossible, in the silence of this far-off lonely place in the
+country, not to feel the weirdness of it all.
+
+Once I closed my eyes and was startled by the uncanny vividness of a
+mind-picture that came unbidden. It was of a scrap of paper on which,
+in rough capitals was printed:
+
+BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE GODS.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE ACETYLENE TORCH
+
+
+Do you suppose he really had the dagger, or was that a lie?" I asked,
+with an effort shaking off the fateful feeling that had come over me as
+if some one were casting a spell.
+
+"There is one way to find out," returned Craig, as though glad of the
+suggestion.
+
+Though they hated him, they seemed forced to admit, for the time, his
+leadership. He rose and the rest followed as he went into Whitney's
+library.
+
+He switched on the lights. There in a corner back of the desk stood a
+safe. Somehow or other it seemed to defy us, even though its master was
+gone. I looked at it a moment. It was a most powerful affair, companion
+to that in the office of which Whitney was so proud, built of layer on
+layer of chrome steel, with a door that was air tight and soup-proof,
+bidding defiance to all yeggmen and petermen.
+
+Lockwood fingered the combination hopelessly. There were some millions
+of combinations and permutations that only a mathematician could
+calculate. Only one was any good. That one was locked in the mind of
+the man who now seemed to baffle us as did his strong-box.
+
+I placed my hand on the cold, defiant surface. It would take hours to
+drill a safe like that, and even then it might turn the points of the
+drills. Explosives might sooner wreck the house and bring it down over
+the head of the man who attacked this monster.
+
+"What can we do?" asked Senora de Moche, seeming to mock us, as though
+the safe itself were an inhuman thing that blocked our path.
+
+"Do?" repeated Kennedy decisively, "I'll show you what we can do. If
+Lockwood will drive me down to the railroad station in his car, I'll
+show you something that looks like action. Will you do it?"
+
+The request was more like a command. Lockwood said nothing, but moved
+toward the porte-cochere, where he had left his car parked just aside
+from the broad driveway.
+
+"Walter, you will stay here," ordered Kennedy. "Let no one leave. If
+any one comes, don't let him get away. We shan't be gone long."
+
+I sat awkwardly enough, scarcely speaking a word, as Kennedy dashed
+down to the railroad station. Neither Alfonso nor his mother betrayed
+either by word or action a hint of what was passing in their minds.
+Somehow, though I did not understand it, I felt that Lockwood might
+square himself. But I could not help feeling that these two might very
+possibly be at the bottom of almost anything.
+
+It was with some relief that I heard the car approaching again. I had
+no idea what Kennedy was after, whether it was dynamite or whether he
+contemplated a trip to New York. I was surprised to see him, with
+Lockwood, hurrying up the steps to the porch, each with a huge tank
+studded with bolts like a boiler.
+
+"There," ordered Craig, "set the oxygen there," as he placed his own
+tank on the opposite side. "That watchman thought I was bluffing when I
+said I'd get an order from the company, if I had to wake up the
+president of the road. It was too good a chance to miss. One doesn't
+find such a complete outfit ready to hand every day."
+
+Out of the tanks stout tubes led, with stop-cocks and gauges at the
+top. From a case under his arm Kennedy produced a curious arrangement
+like a huge hook, with a curved neck and a sharp beak. Really it
+consisted of two metal tubes which ran into a sort of cylinder, or
+mixing chamber, above the nozzle, while parallel to them ran a third
+separate tube with a second nozzle of its own.
+
+Quickly he joined the ends of the tubes from the tanks to the metal
+hook, the oxygen tank being joined to two of the tubes of the hook, and
+the second tank being joined to the other. With a match he touched the
+nozzle gingerly. Instantly a hissing, spitting noise followed, and an
+intense, blinding needle of flame.
+
+"Now we'll see what an oxyacetylene blow-pipe will do to you, old
+stick-in-the-mud," cried Kennedy, as he advanced toward the safe,
+addressing it as though it had been a thing of life that stood in his
+way. "I think this will make short work of you."
+
+Almost as he said it, the steel beneath the blow-pipe became
+incandescent. For some time he laboured to get a starting-point for the
+flame of the high-pressure torch.
+
+It was a brilliant sight. The terrific heat from the first nozzle
+caused the metal to glow under the torch as if in an open-hearth
+furnace. From the second nozzle issued a stream of oxygen, under which
+the hot metal of the door was completely consumed.
+
+The force of the blast, as the compressed oxygen and acetylene were
+expelled, carried a fine spray of the disintegrated metal visibly
+before it. And yet it was not a big hole that it made--scarcely an
+eighth of an inch wide, but clean and sharp as if a buzz-saw were
+eating its way through a plank of white-pine.
+
+With tense muscles Kennedy held this terrific engine of destruction and
+moved it as easily as if it had been a mere pencil of light. He was the
+calmest of all of us as we crowded about him, but at a respectful
+distance.
+
+"I suppose you know," he remarked hastily, never pausing for a moment
+in his work, "that acetylene is composed of carbon and hydrogen. As it
+burns at the end of the nozzle it is broken into carbon and
+hydrogen--the carbon gives the high temperature and the hydrogen forms
+a cone that protects the end of the blow-pipe from being itself burnt
+up."
+
+"But isn't it dangerous?" I asked, amazed at the skill with which he
+handled the blow-pipe.
+
+"Not particularly--when you know how to do it. In that tank is a porous
+asbestos packing saturated with acetone, under pressure. Thus they
+carry acetylene safely, for it is dissolved and the possibility of
+explosion is minimized.
+
+"This mixing chamber, by which I am holding the torch, where the oxygen
+and acetylene mix, is also designed in such a way as to prevent a
+flash-back. The best thing about this style of blow-pipe is the ease
+with which it can be transported and the curious purposes--like
+this--to which it can be put."
+
+He paused a moment to test what had been burnt. The rest of the safe
+seemed as firm as ever.
+
+"Humph!" I heard one of them, I think it was Alfonso, mutter. I
+resented it, but Kennedy affected not to hear.
+
+"When I shut off the oxygen in this second jet," he resumed, "you see
+the torch merely heats the steel. I can get a heat of approximately
+sixty-three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and the flame will exert a
+pressure of fifty pounds to the square inch."
+
+"Wonderful!" exclaimed Lockwood, who had not heard the suppressed
+disapproval of Alfonso, and was watching, in undisguised admiration at
+the thing itself, regardless of consequences. "Kennedy, how did you
+ever think of such a thing?"
+
+"Why, it's used for welding, you know," answered Craig, as he continued
+to work calmly in the growing excitement. "I first saw it in actual use
+in mending a cracked cylinder in an automobile. The cylinder was
+repaired without being taken out at all. I've seen it weld new teeth
+and build up worn teeth on gearing, as good as new."
+
+He paused to let us see the terrifically heated metal under the flame.
+
+"You remember when we were talking to the watchman down there at the
+station, Walter?" he asked. "I saw this thing in that complete little
+shop of theirs. It interested me. See. I turn on the oxygen now in the
+second nozzle. The blow-pipe is no longer an instrument for joining
+metals together, but for cutting them asunder.
+
+"The steel burns just as you, perhaps, have seen a watch-spring burn in
+a jar of oxygen. Steel, hard or soft, tempered, annealed, chrome, or
+Harveyized, it all burns just about as fast, and just about as easily
+under this torch. And it's cheap, too. This attack--aside from what it
+costs to the safe--may amount to a couple of dollars as far as the
+blow-pipe is concerned--quite a difference from the thousands of
+dollars' loss that would follow an attempt to blow a safe like this
+one."
+
+We had nothing to say. We stood in awe-struck amazement as the torch
+slowly, inexorably traced a thin line along the edge of the combination.
+
+Minute after minute sped by, as the line burned by the blow-pipe cut
+around the lock. It seemed hours, but really it was minutes. I wondered
+when he would have cut about the whole lock. He was cutting clear
+through and around it, severing it as if with a superhuman knife.
+
+With something more than half his work done, he paused a moment to rest.
+
+"Walter," he directed, mopping his forehead, for it was real work
+directing that flaming knife, "get New York on the wire. See if
+O'Connor is at his office. If he has any report, I want to talk to him."
+
+It was getting late and the service was slackening up. I had some
+trouble, especially in getting a good connection, but at last I got
+headquarters and was overjoyed to hear O'Connor's bluff, Irish voice
+boom back at me.
+
+"Hello, Jameson," he called. "Where on earth are you? I've been trying
+to get hold of Kennedy for a couple of hours. Rockledge? Well, is
+Kennedy there? Put him on, will you?"
+
+I called Craig and, as I did so, my curiosity got the better of me and
+I sought out an extension of the wire in a den across the hall from the
+library, where I could listen in on what was said.
+
+"Hello, O'Connor," answered Craig. "Anything from Burke yet?"
+
+"Yes," came back the welcome news. "I think he has a clue. We found out
+from here that she received a long distance message during the
+afternoon. Where did Jameson say you were--Rockledge?--that's the
+place. Of course we don't know what the message was, but anyhow she
+went out to meet some one right after that. The time corresponds with
+what the maid says."
+
+"Anything else?" asked Craig. "Have you found any one who saw her?"
+
+"Yes. I think she went over to your laboratory. But you were out."
+
+"Confound it!" interrupted Craig.
+
+"Some one saw a woman there."
+
+"It wasn't the maid?"
+
+"No, this was earlier--in the afternoon. She left and walked across the
+campus to the Museum."
+
+"Oh, by the way, any word of Norton?"
+
+"I'm coming to that. She inquired for Norton. The curator has given a
+good description. But he was out--hadn't been there for some time. She
+seemed to be very much upset over something. She went away. After that
+we've lost her."
+
+"Not another trace?"
+
+"Wait a minute. We had this Rockledge call to work on. So we started
+backward on that. It was Whitney's place, I found out. We could locate
+the car at the start and at the finish. He left the Prince Edward
+Albert and went up there first. Then he must have come back to the city
+again. No one at the hotel saw him the second time.
+
+"What then?" hastened Craig.
+
+"She may have met him somewhere, though it's not likely she had any
+intention of going away. All the rest of those people you have up there
+seem to have gone prepared. We got something on each of them. Also
+you'll be interested to know I've got a report of your own doings. It
+was right, Kennedy, I don't blame you. I'd have done the same with
+Burke on the job. How are you making out? What? You're cracking a crib?
+With what?"
+
+O'Connor whistled as Kennedy related the story of the blow-pipe. "I
+think you're on the right track," he commended. "There's nothing to
+show it, but I believe Whitney told her something that changed her mind
+about going up there. Probably met her in some tea room, although we
+can't find anything from the tea rooms. Anyhow, Burke's out trailing
+along the road from New York to Rockledge and I'm getting reports from
+him whenever he hits a telephone."
+
+"I wish you'd ask him to call me, here, if he gets anything."
+
+"Sure I will. The last call was from the Chateau Rouge,--that's about
+halfway. There was a car with a man and a woman who answers her
+description. Then, there was another car, too."
+
+"Another car?"
+
+"Yes--that's where Norton crosses the trail again. We searched his
+apartment. It was upset--like Whitney's. I haven't finished with that.
+But we have a list of all the private hacking places. I've located one
+that hired a car to a man answering Norton's description. I think he's
+on the trail. That's what I meant by another car."
+
+"What's he doing?"
+
+"Maybe he has a hunch. I'm getting superstitious about this case. You
+know Luis de Mendoza has thirteen letters in it. Leslie told me
+something about a threat he had--a curse. You better look out for those
+two greasers you have up there. They may have another knife for you."
+
+Kennedy glanced over at the de Moches, not in fear but in amusement at
+what they would think if they could hear O'Connor's uncultured opinion.
+
+"All right, O'Connor," said Craig, "everything seems to be going as
+well as we can expect. Don't forget to tell Burke I'm here."
+
+"I won't. Just a minute. He's on another wire for me."
+
+Kennedy waited impatiently. He wanted to finish his job on the safe
+before some one came walking in and stopped it, yet there was always a
+chance that Burke might turn up something.
+
+"Hello," called O'Connor a few minutes later. "He's still following the
+two cars. He thinks the one with the woman in it is Whitney's, all
+right. But they've got off the main road. They must think they're being
+followed.
+
+"Or else have changed their destination," returned Craig. "Tell him
+that. Maybe Whitney had no intention of coming up here. He may have
+done this thing just to throw these people off up here, too. I can't
+say. I can tell better whether he intended to come back after I've got
+this safe open. I'll let you know."
+
+Kennedy rang off.
+
+"Any news of Inez?" asked Lockwood who had been fuming with impatience.
+
+"She's probably on her way up here," returned Craig briefly, taking up
+the blow-pipe again.
+
+Alfonso remained silent. The Senora could scarcely hide her excitement.
+If there were anything in telepathy, I am sure that she read everything
+that was said over the wire.
+
+Quickly Craig resumed his work, biting through the solid steel as if it
+had been mere pasteboard, the blow-pipe showering on each side a
+brilliant spray of sparks, a gaudy, pyrotechnic display.
+
+Suddenly, with a quick motion, Kennedy turned off the acetylene and
+oxygen. The last bolt had been severed, the lock was useless. A gentle
+push of the hand, and he swung the once impregnable door on its
+delicately poised hinges as easily as if he had merely said, "Open
+sesame."
+
+Craig reached in and pulled open a steel drawer directly in front of
+him.
+
+There in the shadow lay the dagger--with its incalculably valuable
+secret, a poor, unattractive piece of metal, but with a fascination
+such as no other object, I had ever seen, possessed.
+
+There was a sudden cry. The Senora had darted ahead, as if to clasp its
+handle and unloose the murderous blade that nestled in its three-sided
+sheath.
+
+Before she could reach it, Kennedy had seized her hand in his iron
+grasp, while with the other he picked up the dagger.
+
+They stood there gazing into each other's eyes.
+
+Then the Senora burst into a hysterical laugh.
+
+"The curse is on all who possess it!"
+
+"Thank you," smiled Kennedy quietly, releasing her wrist as he dropped
+the dagger into his pocket, "I am only the trustee."
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+THE POLICE DOG
+
+
+Craig faced us, but there was no air of triumph in his manner. I knew
+what was in his mind. He had the dagger. But he had lost Inez.
+
+What were we to do? There seemed to be no way to turn. We knew
+something of the manner of her disappearance. At first she had,
+apparently, gone willingly. But it was inconceivable that she stayed
+willingly, now.
+
+I recalled all the remarks that Whitney had ever made about her. Had
+the truth come out in his jests? Was it Inez, not the dagger, that he
+really wanted?
+
+Or was he merely the instrument of one or all of these people before
+us, and was this an elaborate plan to throw Kennedy off and prove an
+alibi for them? He had been the partner of Lockwood, the intimate of de
+Moche. Which was he working for, now--or was he working for himself
+alone?
+
+No answer came to my questions, and I reflected that none would ever
+come, if we sat here. Yet there seemed to be no way to turn, without
+risking putting ourselves in a worse position than before. At least,
+until we had some better plan of campaign, we occupied a strategic
+advantage in Whitney's own house.
+
+The hours of the night wore on. Midnight came. This inaction was
+killing. Anything would be better than that.
+
+Suddenly the telephone startled us. We had wanted it to ring, yet when
+it rang we were afraid of it. What was its message? It was with
+palpitating hearts that we listened, while Craig answered.
+
+"Yes, Burke," we heard him reply, "this is Kennedy."
+
+There came a pause during which we could scarcely wait.
+
+"Where are you now? Cold Stream. That is about twelve miles from
+Rockledge--not on the New York road--the other road. I see. All right.
+We'll be there. Yes, wait for us."
+
+As Craig hung up the receiver, we crowded forward. "Have they found
+her?" asked Lockwood hoarsely.
+
+"It was from Burke," replied Kennedy deliberately. "He is at a place
+called Cold Stream, twelve miles from here. He tells me that we can
+find it easily--on a state road, at a sharp curve that has been widened
+out, just this side of the town. There has been an accident--Whitney's
+car is wrecked."
+
+Lockwood seized his elbow. "My God," he exclaimed, "tell me--she
+isn't--hurt, is she? Quick!"
+
+"So far Burke has not been able to discover a trace of a thing, except
+the wrecked car," replied Kennedy. "I told him I would be over
+directly. Lockwood, you may take Jameson and Alfonso. I will go with
+the Senora and their driver."
+
+I saw instantly why he had divided the party. Neither mother nor son
+was to have a chance to slip away from us. Surely both Lockwood and I
+should be a match for Alfonso. Senora de Moche he would trust to none
+but himself.
+
+Eagerly now we prepared for the journey, late though it was. No one now
+had a thought of rest. There could be no rest with that mystery of Inez
+challenging us.
+
+We were off at last, Lockwood's car leading, for although he did not
+know the roads exactly, he had driven much about the country. I should
+have liked to have sat in front with him, but it seemed safer to stay
+in the back with Alfonso. In fact, I don't think Lockwood would have
+consented, otherwise, to have his rival back of him.
+
+Kennedy and the Senora made a strange pair, the ancient order and the
+ultra-modern. There was a peculiar light in her eyes that gleamed forth
+at the mere mention of the words, "wreck." Though she said nothing, I
+knew that through her mind was running the one tenacious thought. It
+was the working out of the curse! As for Craig, he was always seeking
+the plausible, natural reason for what to the rest of us was
+inexplicable, often supernatural. To him she was a fascinating study.
+
+On we sped, for Lockwood was a good driver and now was spurred on by an
+anxiety that he could not conceal. Yet his hand never faltered at the
+wheel. He seemed to read the signs at the cross-roads without
+slackening speed. In spite of all that I knew, I found myself compelled
+to admire him. Alfonso sat back, for the most part silent. The
+melancholy in his face seemed to have deepened. He seemed to feel that
+he was but a toy in the hands of fate. Yet I knew that underneath must
+smoulder the embers of a bitter resentment.
+
+It seemed an interminable ride even at the speed which we were making.
+Twelve miles in the blackness of a country night can seem like a
+hundred.
+
+At last as we turned a curve, and Lockwood's headlights shone on the
+white fence that skirted the outer edge of the road as it swung around
+a hill that rose sharply to our left and dropped off in a sort of
+ravine at the right beyond the fence, I felt the car tremble as he put
+on the brakes.
+
+A man was waving his arms for us to stop, and as we did, he ran
+forward. He peered in at us and I recognized Burke.
+
+"Whe-where's Kennedy?" he asked, disappointed, for the moment fearing
+he had made a mistake and signalled the wrong car.
+
+"Coming," I replied, as we heard the driver of the other car sounding
+his horn furiously as he approached the curve.
+
+Burke jumped to the safe side of the road and ran on back to signal to
+stop. It was then for the first time that I paid particular attention
+to the fence ahead of us on which now both our own and the lights of
+the other car shone. At one point it was torn and splintered, as though
+something had gone through it.
+
+"Great heavens, you don't mean to say that they went over that?"
+muttered Lockwood, jumping down and running forward.
+
+Kennedy had joined us by this time and we all hurried over. Down in the
+ravine we could see a lantern which Burke had brought and which was now
+resting on the overturned chassis of the car.
+
+Lockwood was down there ahead of us all, peering under the heavy body
+fearfully, as if he expected to see two forms of mangled flesh. He
+straightened up, then took the lantern and flashed it about. There was
+nothing except cushions and a few parts of the car within the radius of
+its gleam.
+
+"Where are they?" he demanded, turning to us. "It's Whitney's car, all
+right."
+
+Burke shook his head. "I've traced the car so far. They were getting
+ahead of me, when this happened."
+
+Together we managed to right the car which was on a hillock. It sank a
+little further down the hill, but at least we could look inside it.
+
+"Bring the lantern," ordered Kennedy.
+
+Minutely, part by part, he went over the car. "Something went wrong,"
+he muttered. "It is too much wrecked to tell what it was. Flash the
+light over here," he directed, stepping over the seat into the back of
+the tonneau.
+
+A moment later he took the light himself and held it close to the rods
+that supported the top. I saw him reach down and pull from them a few
+strands of dark hair that had caught between the rods and had been
+pulled out or broken.
+
+"No need of Bertillon's palette of human hair to identify that," he
+exclaimed. "There isn't time to study it and if there were it would be
+unnecessary. She was with him, all right."
+
+"Yes," agreed Lockwood. "But where is she now--where is he? Could they
+have been hurt, picked up by some one and carried where they could get
+aid?"
+
+Burke shook his head. "I inquired at the nearest house ahead. I had to
+do it in order to telephone. They knew nothing."
+
+"But they are gone," persisted Lockwood. "There is the bottom of the
+bank. You can see that they are not here."
+
+Kennedy had taken the light and climbed the bank again and was now
+going over the road as minutely as if he were searching for a lost
+diamond.
+
+"Look!" he exclaimed.
+
+Where the Whitney car had skidded and gone over the bank, the tires had
+dug deep into the top dressing, making little mounds. Across them now
+we could see the tracks of other tires that had pressed down the mounds.
+
+"Some one else has been here," reconstructed Kennedy. "He passed, then
+stopped and backed up. Perhaps they were thrown out, unconscious, and
+he picked them up."
+
+It seemed to be the only reasonable supposition.
+
+"But they knew nothing at the next house," persisted Burke.
+
+"Is there a road leading off before you get to the house?" asked
+Kennedy.
+
+"Yes--it crosses the line into Massachusetts."
+
+"It is worth trying--it is the only thing we can do," decided Kennedy.
+"Drive slowly to the crossroads. Perhaps we can pick out the
+tire-prints there. They certainly won't show on the road itself. It is
+too hard."
+
+At the crossing we stopped and Kennedy dropped down on his hands and
+knees again with the light.
+
+"There it is," he exclaimed. "The same make of anti-skid tire, at
+least. There was a cut in the rear tire--just like this. See? It is the
+finger-print of the motor car. I think we are right. Turn up here and
+run slowly."
+
+On we went slowly, Kennedy riding on the running-board of the car
+ahead. Suddenly he raised his hand to stop, and jumped down.
+
+We gathered about him. Had he found a continuation of the tire-tracks?
+There were tracks but he was not looking at them. He was looking
+between them. There ran a thin line.
+
+He stuck his finger in it and sniffed. "Not gas," he remarked. "It must
+have been the radiator, leaking. Perhaps he ran his car into
+Whitney's--forced it too far to the edge of the road. We can't tell.
+But he couldn't have gone far with that leak without finding water--or
+cracked cylinders."
+
+With redoubled interest now we resumed the chase. We had mounted a hill
+and had run down into the shadows of a valley when, following in the
+second car, we heard a shout from Kennedy in the first.
+
+Halfway up the hill across the valley, he had come upon an abandoned
+car. It had evidently reached its limit, the momentum of the previous
+hill had carried it so far up the other, then the driver had stopped it
+and let it back slowly off the road into a clump of bushes that hid a
+little gully.
+
+But that was all. There was not a sign of a person about. Whatever had
+happened here had happened some hours before. We looked about. All was
+Cimmerian darkness. Not a house or habitation of man or beast was in
+sight, though they might not be far away.
+
+We beat about the under-brush, but succeeded in stirring up nothing but
+mosquitoes.
+
+What were we to do? We were wasting valuable time. Where should we go?
+
+"I doubt whether they would have kept on the road," reasoned Kennedy.
+"They must have known they would be followed. The hardest place to
+follow them would be across country."
+
+"With a lantern?" I objected. "We can't do it."
+
+Kennedy glanced at his watch. "It will be three hours before there is
+light enough to see anything by," he considered. "They have had at
+least a couple of hours. Five hours is too good a start. Burke--take
+one of the cars. Go ahead along the road. We mustn't neglect that. I'll
+take the other. I want to get back to that house and call O' Connor.
+Walter, you stay here with the rest."
+
+We separated and I felt that, although I was doing nothing, I had my
+hands full watching these three.
+
+Lockwood was restless and could not help beating around in the
+under-brush, in the hope of turning up something. Now and then he would
+mutter to himself some threat if anything happened to Inez. I let him
+occupy himself, for our own, as much as his, peace of mind. Alfonso had
+joined his mother in the car and they sat there conversing in low tones
+in Spanish, while I watched them furtively.
+
+Of a sudden, I became aware that I missed the sound of Lockwood beating
+about the under-brush. I called, but there was no answer. Then we all
+called. There came back nothing but a mocking echo. I could not follow
+him. If I did, I would lose the de Moches.
+
+Had he been laying low, waiting his opportunity to get away? Or was he
+playing a lone hand? Much as I suspected about him, during the past few
+hours I had come to admire him.
+
+I sent the de Moche driver out to look for him, but he seemed afraid to
+venture far, and, of course, returned and said that he could not find
+him. Even in his getaway, Lockwood had been characteristic. He had been
+strong enough to bide his time, clever enough to throw every one off
+guard. It put a new aspect on the case for me. Had Whitney intended the
+capture of Inez for Lockwood? Had our coming so unexpectedly into the
+case thrown the plans awry and was it the purpose to leave them
+marooned at Rockledge while we were shunted off in the city? That, too,
+was plausible. I wished Kennedy would return before anything else
+happened.
+
+It was not long by the clock before Kennedy did return. But it seemed
+ages to me.
+
+He was not alone. With him was a man in a uniform, and a powerful dog,
+for all the world like a huge wolf.
+
+"Down, Searchlight," he ordered, as the dog began to show an uncanny
+interest in me. "Let me introduce my new dog detective," he chuckled.
+"She has a wonderful record as a police dog. I got O'Connor out of bed
+and he telephoned out to the nearest suburban station. That saved a
+good deal of time in getting her up here."
+
+I mustered up courage to tell Kennedy of the defection of Lockwood. He
+did not seem to mind it especially.
+
+"He won't get far, with the dog after him, if we want to take the
+time," he said. "She's a German sheep dog, a Schaeferhund."
+
+Searchlight seemed to have many of the characteristics of the wild,
+prehistoric animal, among them the full, upright ears of the wild dog,
+which are such a great help to it. She was a fine, alert, upstanding
+dog, hardy, fierce, and literally untiring, of a tawny light brown like
+a lioness, about the same size and somewhat of the type of the
+smooth-coated collie, broad of chest and with a full brush of tail.
+Untamed as she seemed, she was perfectly under Kennedy's control and
+rendered him absolute and unreasoning obedience.
+
+They took her over to the abandoned car. There they let her get a good
+whiff of the bottom of the car about the driver's feet, and a moment
+later she started off.
+
+Alfonso and his mother insisted on going with us and that made our
+progress across country slow.
+
+On we went over the rough country, through a field, then skirting a
+clump of woods until at last we came to a lane.
+
+We stopped in the shadow of a thicket. There was an empty summer home.
+Was there some intruder there? Was it really empty?
+
+Now and then we could hear Searchlight scouting about in the
+under-brush, crouching and hiding, watching and guarding. We paused and
+waited in the heavily-laden night air, wondering. The soughing of the
+night wind in the evergreens was mournful. Did it betoken a further
+tragedy?
+
+There was a slight noise from the other side of the house. Craig
+reached out and drew us back into the shadow of the thicket, deeper.
+
+"Some one is prowling about, I think. Leave it to the dog."
+
+Searchlight, who had been near us, was sniffing eagerly. From our
+hiding-place we could just see her. She had heard the sounds, too, even
+before we had, and for an instant stood with every muscle tense.
+
+Then, like an arrow, she darted into the underbrush. An instant later,
+the sharp crack of a revolver rang out. Searchlight kept right on,
+never stopping a second, except, perhaps, in surprise.
+
+"Crack!" almost in her face came a second spit of fire in the darkness,
+and a bullet crashed through the leaves and buried itself in a tree
+with a ping. The intruder's marksmanship was poor, but the dog paid no
+attention to it.
+
+"One of the few animals that show no fear of gun-fire," muttered
+Kennedy, in undisguised admiration.
+
+"G-r-r-r," we heard from the police dog.
+
+"She has made a leap at the hand that holds the gun," cried Kennedy,
+now rising and moving rapidly in the same direction. "She has been
+taught that a man once badly bitten in the hand is nearly out of the
+fight."
+
+We followed also. As we approached we were just in time to see
+Searchlight running in and out between the legs of a man who had heard
+us approach and was hastily making tracks away. As he tripped, the
+officer who brought her blew shrilly on a police whistle just in time
+to stop a fierce lunge at his back.
+
+Reluctantly, Searchlight let go. One could see that with all her canine
+instinct she wanted to "get" that man. Her jaws were open, as, with
+longing eyes, she stood over the prostrate form in the grass. The
+whistle was a signal, and she had been taught to obey unquestioningly.
+
+"Don't move until we get to you, or you are a dead man," shouted
+Kennedy, pulling an automatic as he ran. "Are you hurt?"
+
+There was no answer, but, as we approached, the man moved, ever so
+little, through curiosity to see his pursuers.
+
+Searchlight shot forward. Again the whistle sounded and she dropped
+back. We bent over to seize him, as Kennedy secured the dog.
+
+"She's a devil," ground out the prone figure on the grass.
+
+"Lockwood!" exclaimed Kennedy.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE GOLD OF THE GODS
+
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded Craig, astonished.
+
+"I couldn't wait for you to get back. I thought I'd do a little
+detective work on my own account. I kept getting further and further
+away, knew you'd find me, anyhow. But I didn't think you'd have a brute
+like that," he added, binding up his hand ruefully. "Is there any trace
+of Inez?"
+
+"Not yet. Why did you pick out this house?" asked Kennedy, still
+suspicious.
+
+"I saw a light here, I thought," answered Lockwood frankly. "But as I
+approached, it went out. Maybe I imagined it."
+
+"Let us see."
+
+Kennedy spoke a few words to the man with the dog. He slipped the
+leash, with a word that we did not catch, and the dog bounded off,
+around the house, as she was accustomed to do when out on duty with an
+officer in the city suburbs, circling about the backs of houses as the
+man on the beat walked the street. She made noise enough about it, too,
+tumbling over a tin pail that had been standing on the back porch steps.
+
+"Bang!"
+
+Some one was in the house and was armed. In the darkness he had not
+been able to tell whether an attack was being made or not, but had
+taken no chances. At any rate, now we knew that he was desperate.
+
+I thought of all the methods Kennedy had adopted to get into houses in
+which the inmates were desperate. But always they had been about the
+city where he could call upon the seemingly exhaustless store of
+apparatus in his laboratory. Here we were faced by the proposition with
+nothing to rely on but our native wit and a couple of guns.
+
+Besides, I did not know whether to count on Lockwood as an ally or not.
+My estimation of him had been rising and falling like the barometer in
+a summer shower. I had been convinced that he was against us. But his
+manner and plausibility now equally convinced me that I had been
+mistaken. I felt that it would take some supreme action on his part to
+settle the question. That crisis was coming now.
+
+I think all of us would willingly have pushed Alfonso forward. But the
+relations of the de Moches with Whitney had been so close that I no
+more trusted him than I did Lockwood. And if I could not make out
+Lockwood, a man at least of our own race and education, how could I
+expect to fathom Alfonso?
+
+It seemed, then, to rest with Kennedy and myself. At least so Craig
+appraised the situation.
+
+"You have a gun, Walter," he directed, "Lockwood, give yours to
+Jameson."
+
+Lockwood hesitated. Could he trust being unarmed, while Kennedy and I
+had all the weapons?
+
+Craig had not stopped to ask Alfonso. As he laid out the attack he
+merely tapped the young man's pockets to see whether he was armed or
+not, and finding nothing faced us again, Lockwood still hesitating.
+
+"I want Walter," explained Craig, "to go around back of the house. It
+is there they must be expecting an attack. He can take up his position
+behind that oak. It will be safe enough. By firing one gun on each side
+of the tree he can make enough noise for half a dozen. Then you and I
+can rush the front of the house."
+
+Lockwood had nothing better to suggest. Reluctantly he handed over his
+revolver.
+
+I dropped back from them and skirted the house at a safe distance so as
+not to be seen, then came up back of the tree.
+
+Carefully I aimed at the glass of a window on the first floor, as
+offering the greatest opportunity for making a racket, which was the
+object I had in mind.
+
+I fired from the right and the glass was shattered in a thousand bits.
+Another shot from the left broke the light out of another window on the
+opposite side.
+
+The house was a sort of bungalow, with most of the rooms on the first
+floor, and a small second story or attic window. That went next.
+Altogether I felt that I was giving a splendid account of myself.
+
+From the house came a rapid volley in reply. Whoever was in there was
+not going to surrender without a fight. One after another I plugged
+away with my shots, now bent on making the most of them. With the
+answering shots it made quite a merry little fusillade, and I was glad
+enough to have the shelter of the staunch oak which two or three times
+was hit squarely at about the level of my shoulders. I had never before
+heard the whirr of so many bullets about me, and I cannot say that I
+enjoyed it.
+
+But my attack was what Craig wanted. I heard a noise in the front of
+the house, as of feet running, and then I knew that in spite of all he
+had given me the least dangerous part of the attack.
+
+I plugged away valiantly with what shots I had left, then leaving just
+one more in the chamber of each gun, I hurried around in the shadow, my
+blood up, to help them.
+
+With the aid of the officer, they had just forced the light door and
+Searchlight had been allowed to leap in ahead of them, as I came up.
+
+"Here," I said to Lockwood, handing him back his gun, "take it, there
+is just one shot left."
+
+I, at least, had expected to find one, perhaps two desperate men
+waiting for us. Evidently our ruse had worked. The room was dark, but
+there seemed to be no one in it, though we could hear sounds as though
+some one were hastily barricading the door that led from the front to
+the room at which I had been firing.
+
+Lockwood struck a match.
+
+"Confound it, don't!" muttered Craig, knocking it from his hand. "They
+can see us well enough without helping them."
+
+"Chester!"
+
+We stood transfixed. It was a woman's voice. Where did it come from?
+Could she be in the room?
+
+"Chester--is that you?"
+
+"Yes, Inez. Where are you?"
+
+"I ran up here--in this attic--when I heard the shots."
+
+"Come down, then. All is right, now."
+
+She came down a half ladder, half flight of steps. At the foot she
+paused just a moment and hesitated. Then, like a frightened bird, she
+flew to the safety of Lockwood's arms.
+
+"Mr. Whitney," she sobbed, "called me up and told me that he had
+something very important to say, a message from you. He said that he
+had the dagger, in his safe, up in the country. He told me you'd be
+there and that you expected me to come up with him in his car. I went.
+We had some trouble with the engine. And then that other car--the one
+that followed us, came up behind and forced us off the bank. Mr.
+Whitney and I were both stunned. I don't remember a thing after that,
+until I woke up here. Where is it?"
+
+I listened, with one eye on that door that had been barricaded. Was
+Lockwood really innocent, after all? I could not think that Inez
+Mendoza could make such a mistake, if he were not.
+
+Lockwood clenched his fists. "Some one shall pay for this," he
+exclaimed.
+
+There was the problem--the inner room. Who would go in? We looked at
+each other a moment.
+
+The room in which we were was a living room, and perhaps, when there
+were visitors in the little house, was a guest-room. At any rate, on
+one side was a huge davenport by day which could be transformed into a
+folding bed at night.
+
+Lockwood looked about hastily and his eye fell on the door, then on
+this folding bed.
+
+With a wrench, he opened it and seized the cotton mattress from the
+inside. With his gun ready he advanced toward the barricaded door,
+holding the mattress as a shield, for his experience in wild countries
+had taught him that a cotton mattress is about as good a thing to stop
+bullets as one could find on the spur of the moment.
+
+Kennedy and the officer followed just behind, and the three threw their
+weights on the door almost before we knew what they were about.
+
+"Chester--don't!" cried Inez in alarm, too late. "He'll--kill you!"
+
+The excitement had been too much for her. She reeled, fainting, and I
+caught her.
+
+Before I could restore the davenport to something like its original
+condition so that we could take care of her, the first onslaught was
+over.
+
+Three guns were sticking their blue noses into the darkness of the next
+room.
+
+"Hands up!" shouted Craig, "Drop your gun! Let me hear it fall!"
+
+There followed a thud and Kennedy, followed by Lockwood and the officer
+entered.
+
+As they fumbled to strike a light, I managed to open a window and let
+in some fresh air, while the Senora, for once human, loosened the
+throat of Inez' dress and fanned her.
+
+Through the open door, now, I could hear what was going on in the next
+room, but could not see.
+
+"It was you, Lockwood," I heard a familiar voice accusing, "who was in
+the Museum the night the dagger disappeared."
+
+"Yes," replied Lockwood, a bit disdainfully. "I suspected something
+crooked about that dagger. I thought that if I made a copy of the
+inscription on the blade, I might decipher it myself, or get some one
+to do it for me. I went in and, when a chance came, I hid in the
+sarcophagus. There I waited until the Museum was closed. Then, when
+finally I got to the place where I thought the dagger was--it was gone!"
+
+"The point is," cut in Craig, interrupting, "who was the mysterious
+visitor to Mendoza the night of his murder?"
+
+He paused. No one seemed to be disposed to answer and he went on, "Who
+else than the man who sought to sell the secret on its blade, in return
+for Inez for whom he had a secret passion? I have reasoned it all
+out--the offer, the quarrel, the stabbing with the dagger itself, and
+the escape down the stairs, instead of by the elevator."
+
+"And I," put in Lockwood, "coming to report to Mendoza my failure to
+find the dagger, found him dead--and at once was suspected of being the
+murderer!"
+
+Inez had revived and her quick ears had caught her lover's voice and
+the last words.
+
+Weak as she was, she sprang up and fairly ran into the next room.
+"No--Chester--No!" she cried. "I never suspected--not even when I saw
+the shoe-prints. No--that is the man,--there--I know it--I know it!"
+
+I hurried after her, as she flung herself again between Lockwood and
+the rest of us, as if to shield him, while Lockwood proudly caressed
+the stray locks of dark hair that fluttered on his shoulder.
+
+I looked in the direction all were looking.
+
+Before us stood, unmasked at last, the scientific villain who had been
+plotting and scheming to capture both the secret and Inez--well knowing
+that suspicion would rest either on Lockwood, the soldier of fortune,
+or on the jealous Indian woman whose son had been rejected and whose
+brother he had himself already, secretly, driven to an insane suicide
+in his unscrupulous search for the treasure of Truxillo.
+
+It was Professor Norton, himself--first thief of the dagger which later
+he had hidden but which Whitney's detectives had stolen in turn from
+him; writer of anonymous letters, even to himself to throw others off
+the trail; maker of stramonium cigarettes with which to confuse the
+minds of his opponents, Whitney, Mendoza, and the rest; secret lover of
+Inez whom he demanded as the price of the dagger; and murderer of Don
+Luis.
+
+Senora de Moche and Alfonso, behind me, could only gasp their
+astonishment. Much as she would have liked to have the affair end in a
+general vindication of the curse she could not control a single,
+triumphant thrust.
+
+"His blood," she cried, transfixing Norton with her stern eyes, "has
+cried out of Titicaca for vengeance from that day to this!"
+
+"Want any help?"
+
+We all turned toward the door as Burke, dust-covered and tired, stamped
+in, followed by a man whose face was bandaged and bloody.
+
+"I heard shots. Is it all over?"
+
+But we paid no attention to Burke.
+
+There was Whitney, considerably banged up by the fall, but lucky to be
+alive.
+
+"I tried to shake him," he explained, catching sight of Norton. "But he
+stuck to us, even on our detours. Finally he grew desperate--forced my
+car off the road. What happened after that, I don't know. He must have
+carried me some miles, insensible, and dumped me in the bushes again. I
+was several miles up the hill, tramping along, looking for a
+road-house, when this gentleman found me and said I had gone too far."
+
+Senora de Moche turned from Lockwood and Inez who were standing,
+oblivious to the rest of us, and stared at Whitney's bruised and
+battered face.
+
+"It is the curse," she muttered. "It will never--"
+
+"Just a moment," interrupted Craig, drawing the dagger from his pocket,
+and turning toward Inez. "It was to your ancestor that the original
+possessor of the secret promised to give the 'big fish,' when he was
+killed."
+
+He paused and handed the dagger to her. She touched it shuddering, but
+as though it were a duty.
+
+"Take it," he said simply. "The secret is yours. Only love can destroy
+the curse on the Gold of the Gods."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gold of the Gods, by Arthur B. Reeve
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