Lockwood, I noted, was listening intently, quite in contrast with his former cavalier manner of dismissing all consideration of ancient Inca lore as academic or unpractical.  Did he know something of the dagger?

“I’m very much interested in old Peruvian antiquities myself,” remarked Kennedy, a few minutes later, “though not, of course, a scholar like our friend Norton.”

“Indeed?” returned Whitney; and I noticed for the first time that his eyes seemed fairly to glitter with excitement.

They were prominent eyes, a trifle staring, and I could not help studying them.

“Then,” he exclaimed, rising, “you must know of the ruins of Chan-Chan, of Chima—­those wonderful places?”

Kennedy nodded.  “And of Truxillo and the legend of the great fish and the little fish,” he put in.

Whitney seemed extraordinarily pleased that any one should be willing to discuss his hobby with him.  His eyes by this time were apparently starting from their sockets, and I noticed that the pupils were dilated almost to the size of the iris.

“We must sit down and talk about Peru,” he continued, reaching for a large box of cigarettes in the top drawer of his big desk.

Lockwood seemed to sense a long discussion of archaeology.  He rose and mumbled an excuse about having something to do in the outer office.

“Oh, it is a wonderful country, Professor Kennedy,” went on Whitney, throwing himself back in his chair.  “I am deeply interested in it—­its mines, its railroads, as well as its history.  Let me show you a map of our interests down there.”

He rose and passed into the next room to get the map.  The moment his back was turned, Kennedy reached over to a typewriter desk that stood in a corner of the office, left open by the stenographer, who had gone.  He took two thin second sheets of paper and a new carbon sheet.  A hasty dab or two of the library paste completed his work.

Carefully Craig laid the prepared paper on the floor just a few inches from the door into the outer office and scattered a few other sheets about, as though the wind had blown them off the desk.

As Whitney returned, a big map unrolled in his hands, I saw his foot fall on the double sheet that Craig had laid by the door.

Kennedy bent down and began picking up the papers.

“Oh, that’s all right,” remarked Whitney brusquely.  “Never mind that.  Here’s where some of our interests lie, in the north.”

I don’t think I paid much more attention to the map than did Kennedy as we three bent over it.  His real attention was on the paper which he had placed on the floor, as though fixing in his mind the exact spot on which Whitney had stepped.

As Whitney talked rapidly about the country, we lighted the cigarettes.  They seemed to be of a special brand.  I puffed mine for a moment.  There was a peculiar taste about it, however, which I did not exactly like.  In fact, I think that the Latin-American cigarettes do not seem to appeal to most Americans very much, anyhow.