Gold of the Gods Part 38

"Kennedy!" exclaimed Lockwood and Alfonso together.

"Where is Inez Mendoza?" demanded Craig, without returning the greeting.

"Inez?" they repeated blankly.

Kennedy faced them squarely.

"Come, now. Where is she? This is a show-down. You may as well lay your cards on the table. Where is she--what have you done with her?"

The de Moches looked at Lockwood and he looked at them, but neither spoke for a moment.

"Walter," ordered Kennedy, "there's the telephone. Get the managing editor of the Star and tell him where we are. Every newspaper in the United States, every police officer in every city will have the story, in twelve hours, if you precious rascals don't come across. There--I give you until central gets die Star."

"Why--what has happened?" asked Lockwood, who was the first to recover his tongue.

"Don't stand there asking me what has happened," cried Kennedy impatiently. "Tickle that hook again, Walter. You know as well as I do that you have planned to get Inez Mendoza away from my influence--to kidnap her, in other words--"

"We kidnap her?" gasped Lockwood. "What do you mean, man? I know nothing of this. Is she gone?" He wheeled on the de Moches. "This is some of your work. 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 pa.s.sed 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."

I don't think I have ever seen Kennedy in a more towering rage than he was at that moment.

"When it was only a matter of a paltry poisoned dagger at stake and a fortune that may be mythical or may be like that of Croesus, for all I care, we could play the game according to rules," he exclaimed. "But when you begin to tamper with a life like that of Inez de Mendoza--you have pa.s.sed the bounds of all consideration. You have the Star?

Telephone the story anyhow. We'll arbitrate afterward."

I think, as I related the facts to my editor, it sobered us all a great deal.

"Kennedy," appealed Lockwood at last, as I hung up the receiver, "will you listen to my story?"

"It is what I am here for," replied Craig grimly.

"Believe it or not, as far as I am concerned," a.s.serted Lockwood, "this is all news to me. My G.o.d--where is she?"

"Then how came you here?" demanded Craig.

"I can speak only for myself," hastened Lockwood. "If you had asked where Whitney was, I could have understood, but--"

"Well, where is he?"

"We don't know. Early this afternoon I received a hurried message from him--at least I suppose it was from him--that he had the dagger and was up here. He said--I'll be perfectly frank--he said that he was arranging a conference at which all of us were to be present to decide what to do."

"Meanwhile I was to be kept away at any cost," supplied Kennedy sarcastically. "Where did he get it?"

"He didn't say."

"And you didn't care, as long as he had it," added Craig, then, turning to the de Moches, "And what is your tale?"

Senora de Moche did not lose her self-possession for an instant. "We received the same message. When you called, I thought it would be best for Alfonso to go alone, so I telephoned and caught him at the garage and when my train arrived here, he was waiting."

"None of you have seen Whitney here?" asked Kennedy, to which all nodded in the negative. "Well, you seem to agree pretty well in your stories, anyhow. Let me take a chance with the servants."

It is no easy matter to go into another's household and without any official position quiz and expect to get the truth out of the servants.

But Kennedy's very wrath seemed to awe them. They answered in spite of themselves.

It seemed clear that as far as they went both guests and servants were telling the truth. Whitney had made the run up from the city earlier in the afternoon, had stayed only a short time, then had gone back, leaving word that he would be there again before his guests arrived.

They all professed to be as mystified as ourselves now over the outcome of the whole affair. He had not come back and there had been no word from him.

"One thing is certain," remarked Craig, watching the faces before him as he spoke. "Inez is gone. She has been spirited away without even leaving a trace. Her maid Juanita told me that. Now if Whitney is gone, too, it looks as if he had planned to double-cross the whole crowd of you and leave you safely marooned up here with nothing left but your common hatred of me. Much good may it do you."

Lockwood clenched his fists savagely, not at Kennedy but at the thought that Craig had suggested. His face set itself in tense lines as he swore vengeance on all jointly and severally if any harm came to Inez.

I almost forgot my suspicions of him in admiration.

"Nothing like this would ever have happened if she had stayed in Peru,"

exclaimed Alfonso bitterly. "Oh, why did her father ever bring her here to this land of danger?"

The idea seemed novel to me to look on America as a lawless, uncultured country, until I reflected on the usual Latin-American opinion of us as barbarians.

Lockwood frowned but said nothing, for a time. Then he turned suddenly to the Senora, "You were intimate enough with him," he said. "Did he tell you any more than he told us?"

It was clear that Lockwood felt now that every man's hand was against him.

I thought I could discover a suppressed gleam of satisfaction in her wonderful eyes as she answered, "Nothing more. It was only that I carried out what he asked me."

Could it be that she was taking a subtle delight in the turn of events--the working out of a curse on the treasure-secret which the fatal dagger bore? I could not say. But it would not have needed much superst.i.tion to convince any one that the curse on the Gold of the G.o.ds was as genuine as any that had ever been uttered, as it heaped up crime on crime.

We waited in silence, the more hopeless as the singing of the night insects italicized our isolation from the organized instruments of man for the righting of wrong. Here we were, each suspecting the other, in the home of a man whom all mistrusted.

"There's no use sitting here doing nothing," exclaimed Lockwood in whose mind was evidently the same thought, "not so long as we have the telephone and the automobiles."

These, at least, were our last bonds with the great world that had wrapped a dark night about a darker mystery.

"There are many miles of wire--many miles of road. Which way shall we turn?"

Senora de Moche seemed to take a fiendish delight in the words as she said them. It was as though she challenged our helplessness in the face of a power that was greater than us all.

Lockwood flashed a look of suspicion in her direction. As for myself, I had never been able to make the woman out. To-night she seemed like a sort of dea ex machina, who sat apart, playing on the pa.s.sions of a group of puppet men whom she set against each other until all should be involved in a common ruin.

It was impossible, in the silence of this far-off lonely place in the country, not to feel the weirdness of it all.

Once I closed my eyes and was startled by the uncanny vividness of a mind-picture that came unbidden. It was of a sc.r.a.p of paper on which, in rough capitals was printed:

BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE G.o.dS.