Arthur B. Reeve Crime & Mystery Boxed Set. Arthur B. Reeve
for the downfall and tragedy of her brother, who had betrayed the age-old secret.
Her eyes assumed a far-away, dreamy look as she went on. "You must know that we 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."
Apparently she was thinking of her son and his studies at the University. One could follow her thoughts as they flitted from him to the beautiful girl with whom she had seen us.
"We are a peculiar race," she proceeded. "We seldom intermarry with other races. We are as proud as Señor Mendoza, as proud of our unmixed lineage as your 'belted earls.'"
She said it with a quiet dignity quite in contrast with the nervous, hasty manner of Don Luis. There was no doubt that the race feeling cut deep.
Kennedy had been following her closely and I could see that the cross currents of superstition, avarice and race hatred in the case presented a tangle that challenged him.
"Thank you," he murmured, rising. "You have told me quite enough to make me think seriously before I join in any such undertaking."
She smiled enigmatically and we bowed ourselves out.
"A most baffling woman," was Craig's only comment as we rode down again in the elevator to wait for the return of Don Luis and the Señorita.
Scarcely had their chair set them down at the inn than Alfonso seemed to appear from nowhere. He had evidently been waiting in the shadow of the porch for them.
We stood aside and watched the little drama. For a few minutes the Señorita talked with him. One did not need to be told that she had a deep regard for the young man. She wanted to see him, yet she did not want to see him. Don Luis, on the contrary, seemed to become quite restive and impatient again and to wish to cut the conversation short.
It was self-evident that Alfonso was deeply in love with Inez. I wondered whether, after all, the trouble was that the proud old Castilian Don Luis would never consent to the marriage of his daughter to one of Indian blood? Was he afraid of a love forbidden by race prejudice?
In any event, one could easily imagine the feelings of Alphonso toward Lockwood, whom he saw carrying off the prize under his very eyes. As for his mother, we had seen that the Peruvians of her caste were a proud old race. Her son was the apple of her eye. Who were these to scorn her race, her family?
It was a little more than an hour after our first meeting when the party, including Lockwood, who had finished his letters, gathered again up in the rooms of the Mendozas.
It was a delightful evening, even in spite of the tension on which we were. We chatted about everything from archeology to Wall Street, until I could well imagine how anyone 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 brought into the atmosphere of the peje grande. Visions of hidden treasure seemed to throw a glamour over everything.
Kennedy and the Señorita had moved over to a window, where they were gazing out on the fairyland of Atlantic Beach spread out before them, while Lockwood and Don Luis were eagerly quizzing me on the possibilities of newspaper publicity.
"Oh, Professor Kennedy," I heard her say under her breath, "sometimes I fear that it is the mal de ojo—the evil eye."
I did not catch Craig's answer, but I did catch time and again narrowly observing Don Luis. Our host was smoking furiously now, and his eyes had even more than before that peculiar, staring look. By the way his veins stood out I could see that Mendoza's heart action must be rapid. He was talking more and more wildly as he grew more excited. Even Lockwood noticed it and, I thought, frowned.
Slowly the conviction was forced on me. The man was mad—raving mad!
"Really, I must get back to the city tonight," I overheard Craig say to the Señorita as finally he turned from the window toward us.
Her face clouded, but she said nothing.
"If you could arrange to have us dine with you tomorrow night up here, however," he added quickly in a whisper, "I think I might be prepared to take some action."
"By all means," she replied eagerly, as though catching at anything that promised aid.
On the late train back, I half dozed, wondering what had caused Mendoza's evident madness. 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 illness out of otherwise trifling ailments. If not that, what object could there be for anyone to cause such a condition? Might it be for the purpose of robbery? Or might it be for revenge?
Back in the laboratory, Kennedy pulled out from a cabinet a peculiar apparatus. It seemed to consist of a sort of triangular prism set with its edge vertically on a rigid platform attached to a massive stand.
Next he lighted one of the cigarette stubs which he had carried away so carefully. The smoke curled up between a powerful light and the peculiar instrument, while Craig peered through a lens, manipulating the thing with exhaustless patience and skill.
Finally he beckoned me over and I looked through, too. On a sort of fine grating all I could see was a number of strange lines.
"That," he explained in answer to my unspoken question 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 detraction spectroscopes.
"Every substance, you know, is, when radiating light, characterized by what at first appears to be almost a haphazard set of spectral lines 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 with a twinkle of the eye, "I wish 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 transported it in my arms to the laboratory without an undue number of scratches.
Chapter XXXVI
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 other cigarette stubs.
I placed the cat in a basket and watched Craig until finally he seemed to be rewarded for his patient labors. It was well along toward morning when he obtained in a test-tube a few drops of a colorless, almost odorless liquid.
I watched him curiously as he picked the cat out of the basket and held it gently in his arms. With a dropper he sucked up a bit of the liquid from the test-tube. Then 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. The cat's eye seemed to enlarge, even under the light, as if it were the proverbial cat's eye under a bed.
What did it mean? Was there such a thing 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,"