GOLD OF THE GODS. Arthur B. Reeve
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 Profesor 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.
Chapter 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