GOLD OF THE GODS. Arthur B. Reeve
"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."
Chapter 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,