"I have already told Professor Kennedy that both the tradition and the dagger were handed down in my own family, coming at last to my brother.
As I said, I don"t know how it happened, but somehow he seemed to be getting crazy, until he talked, and the dagger was stolen from him. It came finally into Professor Norton"s hands, from whom it was in turn stolen."
She looked at Inez searchingly, as if to discover just what she knew. I wondered whether the Senora suspected the presence of Lockwood"s footprints in the sarcophagus in the Museum--what she would do if she did.
"After he lost it," she continued reminiscently, "my brother threw himself one day into Lake t.i.ticaca. Everywhere the trail of that dagger, of the secret of the Gold of the G.o.ds has been stained by blood. To-day the world scoffs at curses. But surely that gold must be cursed. It has been cursed for us and ours."
She spoke bitterly; yet might she not mean that the loss of the dagger, the secret, was a curse, too?
"There is one other thing I wish to say, and then I will be through.
Far back, when your ancestors came into the country of mine, an ancestor of your father lost his life over the treasure. It seems as if there were a strange fatality over it, as if the events of to-day were but living over the events of yesterday. It is something that we cannot escape--fate."
She paused a moment, then added, "Yet it might be possible that the curse could be removed if somehow we, who were against each other then, might forget and be for each other now."
"But Senorita Mendoza has not the dagger," put in Kennedy, watching her face keenly, to read the effect of his remark. "She has no idea where it may be."
"Then it is pure tradition on which Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Whitney depend in their search for the treasure?" flashed back the Senora quickly.
Kennedy did not know, but he did not confess it. "Until we know differently, we must take their word for it," he evaded.
"It was not that that I meant, however," replied Senora de Moche. "I meant that we might stop the curse by ceasing to hunt for the treasure.
It has never done any one good; it never will. Why tempt fate, then?
Why not pause before it is too late?"
I could not quite catch the secondary implication of her plan. Did it mean that the treasure would then be left for her family? Or was she hinting at Inez accepting Alfonso"s suit? Somehow I could not take the Senora at her face value. I constantly felt that there was an ulterior motive back of her actions and words.
I saw Craig watching the young man"s face, and followed his eyes. There was no doubt of how he took the remark. He was gazing ardently at Inez.
If there had ever been any doubt of his feelings, which, of course, there had not, this would have settled it.
"One thing more," added the Senora, as though she had had an afterthought, "and that is about Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Whitney. Let me ask you to think it over. Suppose they have not the dagger. Then are their chances better than others? And if they have"--she paused to emphasize it--"what does that mean?"
Kennedy had turned his attention to the Senorita. It was evident that the dilemma proposed by de Moche was not without weight. She had now coloured a flaming red. The woman had struck her in a vital spot.
"Mr. Lockwood is not here to defend himself," Inez said quietly. "I will not have him attacked by innuendo."
She had risen. Neither the ardour of Alfonso nor the seeds of doubt of the Senora had shaken her faith. It was a test that Kennedy evidently was glad to have witnessed. For some day she might learn the truth about the foot-prints. He understood her character better. The Senora, too, had learned that if she were to bring pressure on the girl she might break her, but she would not bend.
Without another word Inez, scarcely bowing stiffly, moved out of the tea room, and we followed, leaving the mother and son there, baffled.
"I hope you will pardon me for allowing you to come here," said Kennedy, in a low voice. "I did it because there are certain things that you ought to hear. It was in fairness to you. I would not have you delude yourself about Mr. Whitney, about--Mr. Lockwood, even. I want you to feel that, no matter what you hear or see, you can come to me and know that I will tell you the truth. It may hurt, but it will be best."
I thought he was preparing the way for a revelation about the foot-prints, but he said nothing more.
"Oh, that woman!" she exclaimed, as if to change the subject. "I do not know, I cannot say, why she affects me so. I saw a change in my father, when he knew her. I have told you how he was, how sometimes I thought he was mad. Did you notice a change in Mr. Whitney, or haven"t you known him long enough? And lately I have fancied that I see the same sort of change beginning in Mr. Lockwood. At times they become so excited, their eyes seem staring, as if some fever were wasting them away. Father seemed to see strange visions, and hear voices, was worse when he was alone than when he was in a crowd. Oh, what is it? I could think of nothing else, not even what she was saying, all the time I was with her."
"Then you fear that in some way she may be connected with these strange changes?" asked Kennedy.
"I don"t know," she temporized; but the tone of her answer was sufficient to convey the impression that in her heart she did suspect something, she knew not what.
"Oh, Professor Kennedy," she cried finally, "can"t you see it?
Sometimes--when she looks out of those eyes of hers--she almost makes people do as she pleases."
We had come to the taxicab stand before the hotel, and Kennedy had already beckoned to a cab to take her home.
As he handed her in she turned with a little shiver.
"Don"t please, think me foolish," she added, with bated breath, "but often I fear that it is, as we call it, the mal de ojo--the evil eye!"
XIII
THE POISONED CIGARETTE
There was not a grain of superst.i.tion in Kennedy, yet I could see that he was pondering deeply what Inez Mendoza had just said. Was it possible that there might be something in it--not objectively, but subjectively? Might that very fear which the Senorita had of the Senora engender a feeling that would produce the very result that she feared?
I knew that there were strange things that modern psychology was discovering. Could there be some scientific explanation of the evil eye?
Kennedy turned and went back into the hotel, to keep his appointment with Whitney, and as he did so I reflected that, whatever credence might be given the evil-eye theory, there was something now before us that was a fact--the physical condition which Inez had observed in her father before his death, saw now in Whitney, and foresaw in Lockwood.
Surely that in itself const.i.tuted enough of a problem.
We found Whitney in the cafe, sitting alone in a leather-cushioned booth, and smoking furiously. I observed him narrowly. His eyes had even more than before that peculiar, staring look. By the manner in which his veins stood out I could see that his heart action must be very rapid.
"Well," he remarked, as we seated ourselves, "how did you come out in your tete-a-tete?"
"About as I expected," answered Kennedy nonchalantly. "I let it go on merely because I wanted Senorita Mendoza to hear certain things, and I thought that the Senora could tell them best. One of them related to the history of that dagger."
I thought Whitney"s eyes would pop out of his head. "What about it?" he asked.
"Well," replied Kennedy briefly, "there was the story of how her brother had it and was driven crazy until he gave it up to somebody, then committed suicide by throwing himself into t.i.ticaca. The other was the tradition that in the days after Pizarro a Mendoza was murdered by it, just as her father has now been murdered."
Whitney was listening intently, and seemed to be thinking deeply of something.
"Do you know," he said finally, with a nod to indicate that he knew what it was that Kennedy referred to, "I"ve been thinking of that de Moche woman a good deal since I left you with her. I"ve had some dealings with her."
He looked at Kennedy shrewdly, as though he would have liked to ask whether she had said anything about him, but did not because he knew Kennedy would not tell. He was trying to figure out some other way of finding out.
"Sometimes I think she is trying to double-cross me," he said, at length. "I know that when she talks to others about me she says many things that aren"t so. Yet when she is with me everything is fine, and she is ready soon to join us, use her influence with influential Peruvians; in fact, there isn"t anything she won"t do--manana, to-morrow."
All that Whitney said we now knew to be true.
"She has one interesting dilemma, however, which I do not mind telling you," remarked Kennedy at length. "She cannot expect me to keep secret what she said before all of us. Inez Mendoza would mention it, anyhow."
"What was that?" queried Whitney, dissembling his interest.
"Why," replied Kennedy slowly, "it was that, with the plans for digging for the treasure which you say you have, suppose you and Lockwood and your a.s.sociates have not the dagger--how are you better off than previous hunters? And supposing you have it--what does that imply?"
Whitney thought a moment over the last proposition of the dilemma.