Arthur B. Reeve

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”