“Now, here in New York, comes this awful death of Senor Mendoza,” she cried.  “I don’t know, no one knows, whether he had obtained the secret of the gold or not.  At any rate, he must have thought he had it.  He has been killed suddenly, in his own home.  That is my answer to your inquiry about the treasure-hunting company you mentioned, whatever it may be.  I need say no more of the curse of Mansiche.  Is the Gold of the Gods worth it?”

There could be no denying that it was real to her, whatever we might think of the story.  I recollected the roughly printed warnings that had been sent to Norton, Leslie, Kennedy, and myself.  Had they, then, some significance?  I had not been able to convince myself that they were the work of a crank, alone.  There must be some one to whom the execution of vengeance of the gods was an imperative duty.  Unsuperstitious as I was, I saw here a real danger.  If some one, either to preserve the secret for himself or else called by divine mandate to revenge, should take a notion to carry out the threats in the four notes, what might not happen?

“I cannot tell you much more of fact than you probably already know,” she remarked, watching our faces intently and noting the effect of every word.  “You know, I suppose, that the treasure has always been believed to be in a large mound, a tumulus I think you call it, visible from our town of Truxillo.  Many people have tried to open it, but the mass of sand pours down on them and they have been discouraged.”

“No one has ever stumbled on the secret?” queried Kennedy.

She shook her head.  “There have been those who have sought, there are even those who are seeking, the point just where to bore into the mounds.  If they could find it, they plan to construct a well-timbered tunnel to keep back the sand and to drive it at the right point to obtain this fabulous wealth.”

She vouchsafed the last information with a sort of quiet assurance that conveyed the idea, without her saying it directly, that any such venture was somehow doomed to failure, that desecrators were merely toying with fate.

All through her story one could see that she felt deeply the downfall and betrayal of her brother, followed by the tragedy to him after the age-old secret had slipped from his grasp.  Was there still to be vengeance for his downfall?  Surely, I thought to myself, Don Luis de Mendoza could not have been in possession of the secret, unless he had arrived at it, with Lockwood, in some other way than by deciphering the almost illegible marks of the dagger.  I thought of Whitney.  Had he perhaps had something to do with the nasty business?

I happened to glance at a huge pile of works on mining engineering on the table, the property of Alfonso.  She saw me looking at them, and her eyes assumed a far-away, dreamy impression as she murmured something.

“You must know that we real Peruvians have been so educated that we never explore ruins for hidden treasure, not even if we have the knowledge of engineering to do so.  It is a sort of sacrilege to us to do that.  The gold was not our gold, you see.  Some of it belongs to the spirits of the departed.  But the big treasure belonged to the gods themselves.  It was the gold which lay in sheets over the temple walls, sacred.  No, we would not touch it.”