The Stolen War-Secret. Arthur B. Reeve
goes on by the light of a blazing fire. The dancers, men and women, are dressed in all kinds of fantastic costumes.”
So from dancing the conversation drifted along to one topic after another, Kennedy showing a marvelous knowledge of things Mexican, mostly, I suspected, second-hand, for he had a sort of skill in such a situation of confining the subjects, if he chose, to those on which he was already somewhat acquainted.
“Señora,” called a voice from the other table at which she had been sitting.
She turned with a gay smile. Evidently the party of friends were eager to have her back.
Some words passed, and in a few moments we found ourselves at the other table with the rest of Señora Ruiz’s friends. No one seemed to think it strange in this Bohemian atmosphere that two newcomers should be added to the party. In fact, I rather suspected that they welcomed us as possibly lightening the load of paying the checks which the waiters brought for various things ordered, none of which were exactly reasonable in price.
AMONG others whom we met was an American, a Western mining-woman whom all seemed to know as Hattie Hawley. She was of the breezy type that the West has produced, interested in Mexican affairs through having purchased an interest in some mines in the southern part of the country, and seemed to be thoroughly acquainted with the methods of Wall Street in exploiting mines.
It was a rapid-fire conversation that they carried on, and I kept silent for the most part, fearing that I might say the wrong thing, and following Kennedy’s lead as much as possible.
Mrs. Hawley happened to be sitting next to Kennedy, and as the talk turned on the situation in the country in which all seemed to be interested in some way, Kennedy ventured to her—
“Do you know Colonel Sinclair?”
“I should say I do,” she replied frankly. “Why, it was only a few days ago that he came in here and we were all sitting at this very table discussing the situation down in Oaxaca. You know, I’m interested in some mines near Colonel Sinclair’s, and in the same railroad through the region which he controls.”
“He isn’t here tonight, then?” pursued Kennedy.
“No,” she answered. “I suppose he is out on Long Island at his place at Westport. A fine boy, the Colonel. We all like him.”
There was no mistaking the tone in which she made the remark. Even if it sounded a little unconventional, it was merely her way of testifying that she had a high regard for the gentleman.
“I have known the Colonel fairly well for a number of years,” prevaricated Kennedy, and the conversation drifted on to other topics.
Kennedy managed to lead it about again so that in a perfectly inconsequential way, after the mention of Sinclair’s name, he could say—
“I have heard him mention the name of a Madame Val—” he hesitated, as if the name were not familiar, “a Madame Valoour, I think it is. Is she here? Does she come around to the cabaret?”
“Oh yes,” replied Hattie Hawley. “She comes around here quite often. I haven’t seen her tonight though. She has been away for a few days—down on Long Island, I believe. Perhaps she is there yet.”
I caught her looking significantly at Kennedy, and wondered what was coming next.
She leaned over and whispered—
“Between you and me, I think the Colonel is stuck on her, only I wouldn’t say that aloud here.”
She flashed a glance at one of the men who had been sitting in the shadow, talking with Señora Ruiz.
“He could tell you more about her than I could,” she remarked under her breath. “I never saw any one so crazy over a woman as he is over Valcour.”
“And does she care for him?” asked Kennedy.
Hattie Hawley considered for a moment.
“I don’t believe she cares for anybody,” she answered.
At least there was no hint that the tragedy was known yet here.
I glanced more closely at the man who was talking to Ruiz. He was dark-faced, tall, military in bearing, straight as an arrow, with a little black imperial and a distinguished shock of bushy dark hair.
“It’s evident that she is an ardent admirer of him,” remarked Kennedy following my eye, “whatever he may think of her.” Then, louder, he asked of Mrs. Hawley, “What is his name? I don’t believe I caught it when we were introduced—that is, if we were, in this very informal meeting.”
She laughed. Evidently she liked it.
“His name is Sanchez,” she replied.
A snatch of conversation from a side table floated over to us.
“Whoever can learn how to get at the key and decipher those hieroglyphics will not only add a chapter to archeology, but he’ll be rich—in my opinion—enormously rich. Why, my dear sir, there is more treasure in Mexico today that has never——”
The voice was drowned in the din of the orchestra starting up a new dance.
Kennedy turned. At another table were two men talking earnestly. One was the very type of the German savant, including the whiskers and the near-sighted glasses. The other looked very much as if he were an American college professor.
The savant, at least, seemed to be at home in the Bohemian atmosphere, but the other man looked for all the world as if he momentarily expected to be discovered by some of his students and have his reputation ruined forever.
“Who is that?” asked Kennedy of Mrs. Hawley. “Do you know them?”
“At the next table?” she answered looking around. “Why, that is Professor Neumeyer, Freidrich Neumeyer, the German archeologist. He has been all over Mexico—Yucatan, Mitla, the pyramids, wherever there are ruins. I never cared much about ruins—guess I’m too modern. But Colonel Sinclair does. He goes in for all that sort of thing—has collections of his own, and all that.
“I believe he and Neumeyer are great friends. I don’t know the other man, but he looks like one of the professors from the University.”
Kennedy continued to divide his attention between the party at our table and the archeologist. His companion, as I myself had observed, seemed entirely out of place outside a classroom or archeological museum, and I soon dismissed him from my thoughts.
But Neumeyer was different. There was a fascination about him, and in fact I felt that I would really like to know the old fellow well enough to have him tell me the tales of adventure combined with scholarship, with which I felt intuitively he must be bursting.
AS THE hour grew later more people arrived, and the groups were continually splitting up and new ones being formed. Thus it came about that Kennedy and myself, having been set down I suppose as mere sightseers, found ourselves at last alone at the table, while Señora Ruiz and another gay party were chatting in animated tones farther down the room.
I looked at Craig inquiringly, but he 6hook his head and said in a whisper:
“I hardly think we are well acquainted enough yet to do much circulating about the room. It would look too much like ‘butting in.’ If any one speaks to us we can play them along, but we had better not do much speaking ourselves—yet.”
It was a novel experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I did every new phase of life in cosmopolitan New York.
The hour was growing late, however, and I began to wonder whether anything else was going to happen, when I saw a waiter go down quietly and speak to Señora Ruiz. A moment later the party of which she was a member rose and one by one disappeared up what had been the stairs of the house when it was formerly a residence. Others rose and followed, perhaps ten or a dozen, all of whom I recognized as intimate friends.
It