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 passed 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 passed 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," asserted Lockwood, "this
is all news to me. My God--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
superstition to convince any one that the curse on the Gold of the Gods
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 passions 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 scrap of paper on which,
in rough capitals was printed:
BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE GODS.
XXIII
THE ACETYLENE TORCH
Do you suppose he really had the dagger, or was that a lie?" I asked,
with an effort shaking off the fateful feeling that had come over me as
if some one were casting a spell.
"There is one way to find out," returned Craig, as though glad of the
suggestion.
Though they hated him, they seemed forced to admit, for the time, his
leadership. He rose and the rest followed as he went into Whitney's
library.
He switched on the lights. There in a corner back of the desk stood a
safe. Somehow or other it seemed to defy us, even though its master was
gone. I looked at it a moment. It was a most powerful affair, companion
to that in the office of which Whitney was so proud, built of layer on
layer of chrome steel, with a door that was air tight and soup-proof,
bidding defiance to all yeggmen and petermen.
Lockwood fingered the combination hopelessly. There were some millions
of combinations and permutations that only a mathematician could
calculate. Only one was any good. That one was locked in the mind of
the man who now seemed to baffle us as did his strong-box.
I placed my hand on the cold, defiant surface. It would take hours to
drill a safe like that, and even then it might turn the points of the
drills. Explosives might sooner wreck the house and bring it down over
the head of the man who attacked this monster.
"What can we do?" asked Senora de Moche, seeming to mock us, as though
the safe itself were an inhuman thing that blocked our path.
"Do?" repeated Kennedy decisively, "I'll show you what we can do. If
Lockwood will drive me down to the railroad station in his car, I'll
show you something that looks like action. Will you do it?"
The request was more like a command. Lockwood said nothing, but moved
toward the porte-cochere, where he had left his car parked just aside
from the broad driveway.
"Walter, you will stay here," ordered Kennedy. "Let no one leave. If
any one comes, don't let him get away. We shan't be gone long."
I sat awkwardly enough, scarcely speaking a word, as Kennedy dashed
down to the railroad station. Neither Alfonso nor his mother betrayed
either by word or action a hint of what was passing in their minds.
Somehow, though I did not understand it, I felt that Lockwood might
square himself. But I could not help feeling that these two might very
possibly be at the bottom of almost anything.
It was with some relief that I heard the car approaching again. I had
no idea what Kennedy was after, whether it was dynamite or whether he
contemplated a trip to New York. I was surprised to see him, with
Lockwood, hurrying up the steps to the porch, each with a huge tank
studded with bolts like a boiler.
"There," ordered Craig, "set the oxygen there," as he placed his own
tank on the opposite side. "That watchman thought I was bluffing when I
said I'd get an order from the company, if I had to wake up the
president of the road. It was too good a chance to miss. One doesn't
find such a complete outfit ready to hand every day."
Out of the tanks stout tubes led, with stop-cocks and gauges at the
top. From a case under his arm Kennedy produced a curious arrangement
like a huge hook, with a curved neck and a sharp beak. Really it
consisted of two metal tubes which ran into a sort of cylinder, or
mixing chamber, above the nozzle, while parallel to them ran a third
separate tube with a second nozzle of its own.
Quickly he joined the ends of the tubes from the tanks to the metal
hook, the oxygen tank being joined to two of the tubes of the hook, and
the second tank being joined to the other. With a match he touched the
nozzle gingerly. Instantly a hissing, spitting noise followed, and an
intense, blinding needle of flame.
"Now we'll see what an oxyacetylene blow-pipe will do to you, old
stick-in-the-mud," cried Kennedy, as he advanced toward the safe,
addressing it as though it had been a thing of life that stood in his
way. "I think this will make short work of you."
Almost as he said it, the steel beneath the blow-pipe became
incandescent. For some time he laboured to get a starting-point for the
flame of the high-pressure torch.
It was a brilliant sight. The terrific heat from the first nozzle
caused the metal to glow under the torch as if in an open-hearth
furnace. From the second nozzle issued a stream of oxygen, under which
the hot metal of the door was completely consumed.
The force of the blast, as the compressed oxygen and acetylene were
expelled, carried a fine spray of the disintegrated metal visibly
before it. And yet it was not a big hole that it made--scarcely an
eighth of an inch wide, but clean and sharp as if a buzz-saw were
eating its way through a plank of white-pine.
With tense muscles Kennedy held this terrific engine of destruction and
moved it as easily as if it had been a mere pencil of light. He was the
calmest of all of us as we crowded about him, but at a respectful
distance.
"I suppose you know," he remarked hastily, never pausing for a moment
in his work, "that acetylene is composed of carbon and hydrogen. As it
burns at the end of the nozzle it is broken into carbon and
hydrogen--the carbon gives the high temperature and the hydrogen forms
a cone that protects the end of the blow-pipe from being itself burnt
up."
"But isn't it dangerous?" I asked, amazed at the skill with which he
handled the blow-pipe.
"Not particularly--when you know how to do it. In that tank is a porous
asbestos packing saturated with acetone, under pressure. Thus they
carry acetylene safely, for it is dissolved and the possibility of
explosion is minimized.
"This mixing chamber, by which I am holding the torch, where the oxygen
and acetylene mix, is also designed in such a way as to prevent a
flash-back. The best thing about this style of blow-pipe is the ease
with which it can be transported and the curious purposes--like
this--to which it can be put."
He paused a moment to test what had been burnt. The rest of the safe
seemed as firm as ever.
"Humph!" I heard one of them, I think it was Alfonso, mutter. I
resented it, but Kennedy affected not to hear.
"When I shut off the oxygen in this second jet," he resumed, "you see
the torch merely heats the steel. I can get a heat of approximately
sixty-three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and the flame will exert a
pressure of fifty pounds to the square inch."
"Wonderful!" exclaimed Lockwood, who had not heard the suppressed
disapproval of Alfonso, and was watching, in undisguised admiration at
the thing itself, regardless of consequences. "Kennedy, how did you
ever think of such a thing?"
"Why, it's used for welding, you know," answered Craig, as he continued
to work calmly in the growing excitement. "I first saw it in actual use
in mending a cracked cylinder in an automobile. The cylinder was
repaired without being taken out at all. I've seen it weld new teeth
and build up worn teeth on gearing, as good as new."
He paused to let us see the terrifically heated metal under the flame.
"You remember when we were talking to the watchman down there at the
station, Walter?" he asked. "I saw this thing in that complete little
shop of theirs. It interested me. See. I turn on the oxygen now in the
second nozzle. The blow-pipe is no longer an instrument for joining
metals together, but for cutting them asunder.
"The steel burns just as you, perhaps, have seen a watch-spring burn in
a jar of oxygen. Steel, hard or soft, tempered, annealed, chrome, or
Harveyized, it all burns just about as fast, and just about as easily
under this torch. And it's cheap, too. This attack--aside from what it
costs to the safe--may amount to a couple of dollars as far as the
blow-pipe is concerned--quite a difference from the thousands of
dollars' loss that would follow an attempt to blow a safe like this
one."
We had nothing to say. We stood in awe-struck amazement as the torch
slowly, inexorably traced a thin line along the edge of the combination.
Minute after minute sped by, as the line burned by the blow-pipe cut
around the lock. It seemed hours, but really it was minutes. I wondered
when he would have cut about the whole lock. He was cutting clear
through and around it, severing it as if with a superhuman knife.
With something more than half his work done, he paused a moment to rest.
"Walter," he directed, mopping his forehead, for it was real work
directing that flaming knife, "get New York on the wire. See if
O'Connor is at his office. If he has any report, I want to talk to him."
It was getting late and the service was slackening up. I had some
trouble, especially in getting a good connection, but at last I got
headquarters and was overjoyed to hear O'Connor's bluff, Irish voice
boom back at me.
"Hello, Jameson," he called. "Where on earth are you? I've been trying
to get hold of Kennedy for a couple of hours. Rockledge? Well, is
Kennedy there? Put him on, will you?"
I called Craig and, as I did so, my curiosity got the better of me and
I sought out an extension of the wire in a den across the hall from the
library, where I could listen in on what was said.
"Hello, O'Connor," answered Craig. "Anything from Burke yet?"
"Yes," came back the welcome news. "I think he has a clue. We found out
from here that she received a long distance message during the
afternoon. Where did Jameson say you were--Rockledge?--that's the
place. Of course we don't know what the message was, but anyhow she
went out to meet some one right after that. The time corresponds with
what the maid says."
"Anything else?" asked Craig. "Have you found any one who saw her?"
"Yes. I think she went over to your laboratory. But you were out."
"Confound it!" interrupted Craig.
"Some one saw a woman there."
"It wasn't the maid?"
"No, this was earlier--in the afternoon. She left and walked across the
campus to the Museum."
"Oh, by the way, any word of Norton?"
"I'm coming to that. She inquired for Norton. The curator has given a
good description. But he was out--hadn't been there for some time. She
seemed to be very much upset over something. She went away. After that
we've lost her."
"Not another trace?"
"Wait a minute. We had this Rockledge call to work on. So we started
backward on that. It was Whitney's place, I found out. We could locate
the car at the start and at the finish. He left the Prince Edward
Albert and went up there first. Then he must have come back to the city
again. No one at the hotel saw him the second time.
"What then?" hastened Craig.
"She may have met him somewhere, though it's not likely she had any
intention of going away. All the rest of those people you have up there
seem to have gone prepared. We got something on each of them. Also
you'll be interested to know I've got a report of your own doings. It
was right, Kennedy, I don't blame you. I'd have done the same with
Burke on the job. How are you making out? What? You're cracking a crib?
With what?"
O'Connor whistled as Kennedy related the story of the blow-pipe. "I
think you're on the right track," he commended. "There's nothing to
show it, but I believe Whitney told her something that changed her mind
about going up there. Probably met her in some tea room, although we
can't find anything from the tea rooms. Anyhow, Burke's out trailing
along the road from New York to Rockledge and I'm getting reports from
him whenever he hits a telephone."
"I wish you'd ask him to call me, here, if he gets anything."
"Sure I will. The last call was from the Chateau Rouge,--that's about
halfway. There was a car with a man and a woman who answers her
description. Then, there was another car, too."
"Another car?"
"Yes--that's where Norton crosses the trail again. We searched his
apartment. It was upset--like Whitney's. I haven't finished with that.
But we have a list of all the private hacking places. I've located one
that hired a car to a man answering Norton's description. I think he's
on the trail. That's what I meant by another car."
"What's he doing?"
"Maybe he has a hunch. I'm getting superstitious about this case. You
know Luis de Mendoza has thirteen letters in it. Leslie told me
something about a threat he had--a curse. You better look out for those
two greasers you have up there. They may have another knife for you."
Kennedy glanced over at the de Moches, not in fear but in amusement at
what they would think if they could hear O'Connor's uncultured opinion.
"All right, O'Connor," said Craig, "everything seems to be going as
well as we can expect. Don't forget to tell Burke I'm here."
"I won't. Just a minute. He's on another wire for me."
Kennedy waited impatiently. He wanted to finish his job on the safe
before some one came walking in and stopped it, yet there was always a
chance that Burke might turn up something.
"Hello," called O'Connor a few minutes later. "He's still following the
two cars. He thinks the one with the woman in it is Whitney's, all
right. But they've got off the main road. They must think they're being
followed.
"Or else have changed their destination," returned Craig. "Tell him
that. Maybe Whitney had no intention of coming up here. He may have
done this thing just to throw these people off up here, too. I can't
say. I can tell better whether he intended to come back after I've got
this safe open. I'll let you know."
Kennedy rang off.
"Any news of Inez?" asked Lockwood who had been fuming with impatience.
"She's probably on her way up here," returned Craig briefly, taking up
the blow-pipe again.
Alfonso remained silent. The Senora could scarcely hide her excitement.
If there were anything in telepathy, I am sure that she read everything
that was said over the wire.
Quickly Craig resumed his work, biting through the solid steel as if it
had been mere pasteboard, the blow-pipe showering on each side a
brilliant spray of sparks, a gaudy, pyrotechnic display.
Suddenly, with a quick motion, Kennedy turned off the acetylene and
oxygen. The last bolt had been severed, the lock was useless. A gentle
push of the hand, and he swung the once impregnable door on its
delicately poised hinges as easily as if he had merely said, "Open
sesame."
Craig reached in and pulled open a steel drawer directly in front of
him.
There in the shadow lay the dagger--with its incalculably valuable
secret, a poor, unattractive piece of metal, but with a fascination
such as no other object, I had ever seen, possessed.
There was a sudden cry. The Senora had darted ahead, as if to clasp its
handle and unloose the murderous blade that nestled in its three-sided
sheath.
Before she could reach it, Kennedy had seized her hand in his iron
grasp, while with the other he picked up the dagger.
They stood there gazing into each other's eyes.
Then the Senora burst into a hysterical laugh.
"The curse is on all who possess it!"
"Thank you," smiled Kennedy quietly, releasing her wrist as he dropped
the dagger into his pocket, "I am only the trustee."
XXIV
THE POLICE DOG
Craig faced us, but there was no air of triumph in his manner. I knew
what was in his mind. He had the dagger. But he had lost Inez.
What were we to do? There seemed to be no way to turn. We knew
something of the manner of her disappearance. At first she had,
apparently, gone willingly. But it was inconceivable that she stayed
willingly, now.
I recalled all the remarks that Whitney had ever made about her. Had
the truth come out in his jests? Was it Inez, not the dagger, that he
really wanted?
Or was he merely the instrument of one or all of these people before
us, and was this an elaborate plan to throw Kennedy off and prove an
alibi for them? He had been the partner of Lockwood, the intimate of de
Moche. Which was he working for, now--or was he working for himself
alone?
No answer came to my questions, and I reflected that none would ever
come, if we sat here. Yet there seemed to be no way to turn, without
risking putting ourselves in a worse position than before. At least,
until we had some better plan of campaign, we occupied a strategic
advantage in Whitney's own house.
The hours of the night wore on. Midnight came. This inaction was
killing. Anything would be better than that.
Suddenly the telephone startled us. We had wanted it to ring, yet when
it rang we were afraid of it. What was its message? It was with
palpitating hearts that we listened, while Craig answered.
"Yes, Burke," we heard him reply, "this is Kennedy."
There came a pause during which we could scarcely wait.
"Where are you now? Cold Stream. That is about twelve miles from
Rockledge--not on the New York road--the other road. I see. All right.
We'll be there. Yes, wait for us."
As Craig hung up the receiver, we crowded forward. "Have they found
her?" asked Lockwood hoarsely.
"It was from Burke," replied Kennedy deliberately. "He is at a place
called Cold Stream, twelve miles from here. He tells me that we can
find it easily--on a state road, at a sharp curve that has been widened
out, just this side of the town. There has been an accident--Whitney's
car is wrecked."
Lockwood seized his elbow. "My God," he exclaimed, "tell me--she
isn't--hurt, is she? Quick!"