Kennedy did not appear to be particularly impressed.  “Is that so?” he said merely.  “What are they?”

“Well,” resumed Lockwood, “I wasn’t in Lima at the time.  I was up here.  But they tell me that there was something crooked about the way that that dagger was got away from an Indian—­a brother of Senora de Moche.”  “Yes,” replied Kennedy, “I know something about it.  He committed suicide.  But what has that to do with Norton?”

Lockwood hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders.  “I should think the inference was plain,” he insinuated.  Then, looking at Craig fixedly, as though to take his measure, he added, “We are not out of touch with what is going on down there, even if we are several thousand miles away.”

I wondered whether he had any information more than we had already obtained by X-raying the letter to Whitney signed “Haggerty.”  If he had, it was not his purpose, evidently, yet to disclose it.  I felt from his manner that he was not playing a trump-card, but was just feeling us out by this lead.

“There was some crooked business about that dagger down there as well as here,” he pursued.  “There are many interests connected with it.  Don’t you think that it would be worth while watching Norton?” he paused, then added:  “We do—­and we’re going to do it.”

“Thank you very much,” returned Kennedy quietly.  “Mr. Whitney has already told me he intended to do so.”

Lockwood eyed us critically, as though not quite sure what to make of the cool manner in which Craig took it.

“I think if I were you,” he said at length, “I’d keep a close watch on the de Moches, both of them, too.”

“Exactly,” agreed Craig, without showing undue interest.

Lockwood had risen.  “Well,” he snapped, “you may not think much of what I am telling you now.  But just wait until our detectives begin to dig up facts.”  No sooner had he left than I turned to Craig.  “What was that?” I asked.  “A plant?”

“Perhaps,” he returned, clearing up the materials which he had been using.

The telephone rang.

“Hello, Norton,” I heard Craig answer.  “What’s that?  You are shadowed by some one—­you think it is by Whitney?”

I had been expecting something of the sort, and listened attentively, but it was impossible to gather the drift of the one-sided conversation.

As Kennedy hung up the receiver I remarked, “So it was not a bluff, after all.”

“I think my plan is working,” he remarked thoughtfully.  “You heard what he said?  He guesses right the first time, that it is Whitney.  The last thing he said was, ’I’ll get even!  I’ll take some action!’ and then he rang off.  I think we’ll hear something soon.”

Instead of going out, Kennedy pulled out the several unsigned letters we had collected, and began the laborious process of studying the printing, analyzing it, in the hope that he might discover some new clue.