“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.