Chapter VIII: Part 8

Kennedy and the Senora made a strange pair, the ancient order and the ultra-modern. There was a peculiar light in her eyes that gleamed forth at the mere mention of the words, "wreck." Though she said nothing, I knew that through her mind was running the one tenacious thought. It was the working out of the curse! As for Craig, he was always seeking the plausible, natural reason for what to the rest of us was inexplicable, often supernatural. To him she was a fascinating study.

On we sped, for Lockwood was a good driver and now was spurred on by an anxiety that he could not conceal. Yet his hand never faltered at the wheel. He seemed to read the signs at the cross-roads without slackening speed. In spite of all that I knew, I found myself compelled to admire him. Alfonso sat back, for the most part silent. The melancholy in his face seemed to have deepened. He seemed to feel that he was but a toy in the hands of fate. Yet I knew that underneath must smoulder the embers of a bitter resentment.

It seemed an interminable ride even at the speed which we were making. Twelve miles in the blackness of a country night can seem like a hundred.

At last as we turned a curve, and Lockwood's headlights shone on the white fence that skirted the outer edge of the road as it swung around a hill that rose sharply to our left and dropped off in a sort of ravine at the right beyond the fence, I felt the car tremble as he put on the brakes.

A man was waving his arms for us to stop, and as we did, he ran forward. He peered in at us and I recognized Burke.

"Whe-where's Kennedy?" he asked, disappointed, for the moment fearing he had made a mistake and signalled the wrong car.

"Coming," I replied, as we heard the driver of the other car sounding his horn furiously as he approached the curve.

Burke jumped to the safe side of the road and ran on back to signal to stop. It was then for the first time that I paid particular attention to the fence ahead of us on which now both our own and the lights of the other car shone. At one point it was torn and splintered, as though something had gone through it.

"Great heavens, you don't mean to say that they went over that?" muttered Lockwood, jumping down and running forward.

Kennedy had joined us by this time and we all hurried over. Down in the ravine we could see a lantern which Burke had brought and which was now resting on the overturned chassis of the car.

Lockwood was down there ahead of us all, peering under the heavy body fearfully, as if he expected to see two forms of mangled flesh. He straightened up, then took the lantern and flashed it about. There was nothing except cushions and a few parts of the car within the radius of its gleam.

"Where are they?" he demanded, turning to us. "It's Whitney's car, all right."

Burke shook his head. "I've traced the car so far. They were getting ahead of me, when this happened."

Together we managed to right the car which was on a hillock. It sank a little further down the hill, but at least we could look inside it.

"Bring the lantern," ordered Kennedy.

Minutely, part by part, he went over the car. "Something went wrong," he muttered. "It is too much wrecked to tell what it was. Flash the light over here," he directed, stepping over the seat into the back of the tonneau.

A moment later he took the light himself and held it close to the rods that supported the top. I saw him reach down and pull from them a few strands of dark hair that had caught between the rods and had been pulled out or broken.

"No need of Bertillon's palette of human hair to identify that," he exclaimed. "There isn't time to study it and if there were it would be unnecessary. She was with him, all right."

"Yes," agreed Lockwood. "But where is she now--where is he? Could they have been hurt, picked up by some one and carried where they could get aid?"

Burke shook his head. "I inquired at the nearest house ahead. I had to do it in order to telephone. They knew nothing."

"But they are gone," persisted Lockwood. "There is the bottom of the bank. You can see that they are not here."

Kennedy had taken the light and climbed the bank again and was now going over the road as minutely as if he were searching for a lost diamond.

"Look!" he exclaimed.

Where the Whitney car had skidded and gone over the bank, the tires had dug deep into the top dressing, making little mounds. Across them now we could see the tracks of other tires that had pressed down the mounds.

"Some one else has been here," reconstructed Kennedy. "He passed, then stopped and backed up. Perhaps they were thrown out, unconscious, and he picked them up."

It seemed to be the only reasonable supposition.

"But they knew nothing at the next house," persisted Burke.

"Is there a road leading off before you get to the house?" asked Kennedy.

"Yes--it crosses the line into Massachusetts."

"It is worth trying--it is the only thing we can do," decided Kennedy. "Drive slowly to the crossroads. Perhaps we can pick out the tire-prints there. They certainly won't show on the road itself. It is too hard."

At the crossing we stopped and Kennedy dropped down on his hands and knees again with the light.

"There it is," he exclaimed. "The same make of anti-skid tire, at least. There was a cut in the rear tire--just like this. See? It is the finger-print of the motor car. I think we are right. Turn up here and run slowly."

On we went slowly, Kennedy riding on the running-board of the car ahead. Suddenly he raised his hand to stop, and jumped down.

We gathered about him. Had he found a continuation of the tire-tracks? There were tracks but he was not looking at them. He was looking between them. There ran a thin line.

He stuck his finger in it and sniffed. "Not gas," he remarked. "It must have been the radiator, leaking. Perhaps he ran his car into Whitney's--forced it too far to the edge of the road. We can't tell. But he couldn't have gone far with that leak without finding water--or cracked cylinders."

With redoubled interest now we resumed the chase. We had mounted a hill and had run down into the shadows of a valley when, following in the second car, we heard a shout from Kennedy in the first.

Halfway up the hill across the valley, he had come upon an abandoned car. It had evidently reached its limit, the momentum of the previous hill had carried it so far up the other, then the driver had stopped it and let it back slowly off the road into a clump of bushes that hid a little gully.

But that was all. There was not a sign of a person about. Whatever had happened here had happened some hours before. We looked about. All was Cimmerian darkness. Not a house or habitation of man or beast was in sight, though they might not be far away.

We beat about the under-brush, but succeeded in stirring up nothing but mosquitoes.

What were we to do? We were wasting valuable time. Where should we go?

"I doubt whether they would have kept on the road," reasoned Kennedy. "They must have known they would be followed. The hardest place to follow them would be across country."

"With a lantern?" I objected. "We can't do it."

Kennedy glanced at his watch. "It will be three hours before there is light enough to see anything by," he considered. "They have had at least a couple of hours. Five hours is too good a start. Burke--take one of the cars. Go ahead along the road. We mustn't neglect that. I'll take the other. I want to get back to that house and call O' Connor. Walter, you stay here with the rest."

We separated and I felt that, although I was doing nothing, I had my hands full watching these three.

Lockwood was restless and could not help beating around in the under-brush, in the hope of turning up something. Now and then he would mutter to himself some threat if anything happened to Inez. I let him occupy himself, for our own, as much as his, peace of mind. Alfonso had joined his mother in the car and they sat there conversing in low tones in Spanish, while I watched them furtively.

Of a sudden, I became aware that I missed the sound of Lockwood beating about the under-brush. I called, but there was no answer. Then we all called. There came back nothing but a mocking echo. I could not follow him. If I did, I would lose the de Moches.

Had he been laying low, waiting his opportunity to get away? Or was he playing a lone hand? Much as I suspected about him, during the past few hours I had come to admire him.

I sent the de Moche driver out to look for him, but he seemed afraid to venture far, and, of course, returned and said that he could not find him. Even in his getaway, Lockwood had been characteristic. He had been strong enough to bide his time, clever enough to throw every one off guard. It put a new aspect on the case for me. Had Whitney intended the capture of Inez for Lockwood? Had our coming so unexpectedly into the case thrown the plans awry and was it the purpose to leave them marooned at Rockledge while we were shunted off in the city? That, too, was plausible. I wished Kennedy would return before anything else happened.

It was not long by the clock before Kennedy did return. But it seemed ages to me.

He was not alone. With him was a man in a uniform, and a powerful dog, for all the world like a huge wolf.

"Down, Searchlight," he ordered, as the dog began to show an uncanny interest in me. "Let me introduce my new dog detective," he chuckled. "She has a wonderful record as a police dog. I got O'Connor out of bed and he telephoned out to the nearest suburban station. That saved a good deal of time in getting her up here."

I mustered up courage to tell Kennedy of the defection of Lockwood. He did not seem to mind it especially.

"He won't get far, with the dog after him, if we want to take the time," he said. "She's a German sheep dog, a Schaeferhund."

Searchlight seemed to have many of the characteristics of the wild, prehistoric animal, among them the full, upright ears of the wild dog, which are such a great help to it. She was a fine, alert, upstanding dog, hardy, fierce, and literally untiring, of a tawny light brown like a lioness, about the same size and somewhat of the type of the smooth-coated collie, broad of chest and with a full brush of tail. Untamed as she seemed, she was perfectly under Kennedy's control and rendered him absolute and unreasoning obedience.

They took her over to the abandoned car. There they let her get a good whiff of the bottom of the car about the driver's feet, and a moment later she started off.

Alfonso and his mother insisted on going with us and that made our progress across country slow.

On we went over the rough country, through a field, then skirting a clump of woods until at last we came to a lane.

We stopped in the shadow of a thicket. There was an empty summer home. Was there some intruder there? Was it really empty?

Now and then we could hear Searchlight scouting about in the under-brush, crouching and hiding, watching and guarding. We paused and waited in the heavily-laden night air, wondering. The soughing of the night wind in the evergreens was mournful. Did it betoken a further tragedy?

There was a slight noise from the other side of the house. Craig reached out and drew us back into the shadow of the thicket, deeper.

"Some one is prowling about, I think. Leave it to the dog."

Searchlight, who had been near us, was sniffing eagerly. From our hiding-place we could just see her. She had heard the sounds, too, even before we had, and for an instant stood with every muscle tense.

Then, like an arrow, she darted into the underbrush. An instant later, the sharp crack of a revolver rang out. Searchlight kept right on, never stopping a second, except, perhaps, in surprise.

"Crack!" almost in her face came a second spit of fire in the darkness, and a bullet crashed through the leaves and buried itself in a tree with a ping. The intruder's marksmanship was poor, but the dog paid no attention to it.

"One of the few animals that show no fear of gun-fire," muttered Kennedy, in undisguised admiration.

"G-r-r-r," we heard from the police dog.

"She has made a leap at the hand that holds the gun," cried Kennedy, now rising and moving rapidly in the same direction. "She has been taught that a man once badly bitten in the hand is nearly out of the fight."

We followed also. As we approached we were just in time to see Searchlight running in and out between the legs of a man who had heard us approach and was hastily making tracks away. As he tripped, the officer who brought her blew shrilly on a police whistle just in time to stop a fierce lunge at his back.

Reluctantly, Searchlight let go. One could see that with all her canine instinct she wanted to "get" that man. Her jaws were open, as, with longing eyes, she stood over the prostrate form in the grass. The whistle was a signal, and she had been taught to obey unquestioningly.

"Don't move until we get to you, or you are a dead man," shouted Kennedy, pulling an automatic as he ran. "Are you hurt?"

There was no answer, but, as we approached, the man moved, ever so little, through curiosity to see his pursuers.

Searchlight shot forward. Again the whistle sounded and she dropped back. We bent over to seize him, as Kennedy secured the dog.

"She's a devil," ground out the prone figure on the grass.

"Lockwood!" exclaimed Kennedy.

XXV

THE GOLD OF THE GODS

"What are you doing here?" demanded Craig, astonished.

"I couldn't wait for you to get back. I thought I'd do a little detective work on my own account. I kept getting further and further away, knew you'd find me, anyhow. But I didn't think you'd have a brute like that," he added, binding up his hand ruefully. "Is there any trace of Inez?"

"Not yet. Why did you pick out this house?" asked Kennedy, still suspicious.

"I saw a light here, I thought," answered Lockwood frankly. "But as I approached, it went out. Maybe I imagined it."

"Let us see."

Kennedy spoke a few words to the man with the dog. He slipped the leash, with a word that we did not catch, and the dog bounded off, around the house, as she was accustomed to do when out on duty with an officer in the city suburbs, circling about the backs of houses as the man on the beat walked the street. She made noise enough about it, too, tumbling over a tin pail that had been standing on the back porch steps.

"Bang!"

Some one was in the house and was armed. In the darkness he had not been able to tell whether an attack was being made or not, but had taken no chances. At any rate, now we knew that he was desperate.

I thought of all the methods Kennedy had adopted to get into houses in which the inmates were desperate. But always they had been about the city where he could call upon the seemingly exhaustless store of apparatus in his laboratory. Here we were faced by the proposition with nothing to rely on but our native wit and a couple of guns.

Besides, I did not know whether to count on Lockwood as an ally or not. My estimation of him had been rising and falling like the barometer in a summer shower. I had been convinced that he was against us. But his manner and plausibility now equally convinced me that I had been mistaken. I felt that it would take some supreme action on his part to settle the question. That crisis was coming now.

I think all of us would willingly have pushed Alfonso forward. But the relations of the de Moches with Whitney had been so close that I no more trusted him than I did Lockwood. And if I could not make out Lockwood, a man at least of our own race and education, how could I expect to fathom Alfonso?

It seemed, then, to rest with Kennedy and myself. At least so Craig appraised the situation.

"You have a gun, Walter," he directed, "Lockwood, give yours to Jameson."

Lockwood hesitated. Could he trust being unarmed, while Kennedy and I had all the weapons?

Craig had not stopped to ask Alfonso. As he laid out the attack he merely tapped the young man's pockets to see whether he was armed or not, and finding nothing faced us again, Lockwood still hesitating.

"I want Walter," explained Craig, "to go around back of the house. It is there they must be expecting an attack. He can take up his position behind that oak. It will be safe enough. By firing one gun on each side of the tree he can make enough noise for half a dozen. Then you and I can rush the front of the house."

Lockwood had nothing better to suggest. Reluctantly he handed over his revolver.

I dropped back from them and skirted the house at a safe distance so as not to be seen, then came up back of the tree.

Carefully I aimed at the glass of a window on the first floor, as offering the greatest opportunity for making a racket, which was the object I had in mind.

I fired from the right and the glass was shattered in a thousand bits. Another shot from the left broke the light out of another window on the opposite side.

The house was a sort of bungalow, with most of the rooms on the first floor, and a small second story or attic window. That went next. Altogether I felt that I was giving a splendid account of myself.

From the house came a rapid volley in reply. Whoever was in there was not going to surrender without a fight. One after another I plugged away with my shots, now bent on making the most of them. With the answering shots it made quite a merry little fusillade, and I was glad enough to have the shelter of the staunch oak which two or three times was hit squarely at about the level of my shoulders. I had never before heard the whirr of so many bullets about me, and I cannot say that I enjoyed it.

But my attack was what Craig wanted. I heard a noise in the front of the house, as of feet running, and then I knew that in spite of all he had given me the least dangerous part of the attack.

I plugged away valiantly with what shots I had left, then leaving just one more in the chamber of each gun, I hurried around in the shadow, my blood up, to help them.

With the aid of the officer, they had just forced the light door and Searchlight had been allowed to leap in ahead of them, as I came up.

"Here," I said to Lockwood, handing him back his gun, "take it, there is just one shot left."

I, at least, had expected to find one, perhaps two desperate men waiting for us. Evidently our ruse had worked. The room was dark, but there seemed to be no one in it, though we could hear sounds as though some one were hastily barricading the door that led from the front to the room at which I had been firing.

Lockwood struck a match.

"Confound it, don't!" muttered Craig, knocking it from his hand. "They can see us well enough without helping them."

"Chester!"

We stood transfixed. It was a woman's voice. Where did it come from? Could she be in the room?

"Chester--is that you?"

"Yes, Inez. Where are you?"

"I ran up here--in this attic--when I heard the shots."

"Come down, then. All is right, now."

She came down a half ladder, half flight of steps. At the foot she paused just a moment and hesitated. Then, like a frightened bird, she flew to the safety of Lockwood's arms.

"Mr. Whitney," she sobbed, "called me up and told me that he had something very important to say, a message from you. He said that he had the dagger, in his safe, up in the country. He told me you'd be there and that you expected me to come up with him in his car. I went. We had some trouble with the engine. And then that other car--the one that followed us, came up behind and forced us off the bank. Mr. Whitney and I were both stunned. I don't remember a thing after that, until I woke up here. Where is it?"

I listened, with one eye on that door that had been barricaded. Was Lockwood really innocent, after all? I could not think that Inez Mendoza could make such a mistake, if he were not.

Lockwood clenched his fists. "Some one shall pay for this," he exclaimed.

There was the problem--the inner room. Who would go in? We looked at each other a moment.

The room in which we were was a living room, and perhaps, when there were visitors in the little house, was a guest-room. At any rate, on one side was a huge davenport by day which could be transformed into a folding bed at night.

Lockwood looked about hastily and his eye fell on the door, then on this folding bed.

With a wrench, he opened it and seized the cotton mattress from the inside. With his gun ready he advanced toward the barricaded door, holding the mattress as a shield, for his experience in wild countries had taught him that a cotton mattress is about as good a thing to stop bullets as one could find on the spur of the moment.

Kennedy and the officer followed just behind, and the three threw their weights on the door almost before we knew what they were about.

"Chester--don't!" cried Inez in alarm, too late. "He'll--kill you!"

The excitement had been too much for her. She reeled, fainting, and I caught her.

Before I could restore the davenport to something like its original condition so that we could take care of her, the first onslaught was over.

Three guns were sticking their blue noses into the darkness of the next room.

"Hands up!" shouted Craig, "Drop your gun! Let me hear it fall!"

There followed a thud and Kennedy, followed by Lockwood and the officer entered.

As they fumbled to strike a light, I managed to open a window and let in some fresh air, while the Senora, for once human, loosened the throat of Inez' dress and fanned her.

Through the open door, now, I could hear what was going on in the next room, but could not see.

"It was you, Lockwood," I heard a familiar voice accusing, "who was in the Museum the night the dagger disappeared."

"Yes," replied Lockwood, a bit disdainfully. "I suspected something crooked about that dagger. I thought that if I made a copy of the inscription on the blade, I might decipher it myself, or get some one to do it for me. I went in and, when a chance came, I hid in the sarcophagus. There I waited until the Museum was closed. Then, when finally I got to the place where I thought the dagger was--it was gone!"

"The point is," cut in Craig, interrupting, "who was the mysterious visitor to Mendoza the night of his murder?"

He paused. No one seemed to be disposed to answer and he went on, "Who else than the man who sought to sell the secret on its blade, in return for Inez for whom he had a secret passion? I have reasoned it all out--the offer, the quarrel, the stabbing with the dagger itself, and the escape down the stairs, instead of by the elevator."

"And I," put in Lockwood, "coming to report to Mendoza my failure to find the dagger, found him dead--and at once was suspected of being the murderer!"

Inez had revived and her quick ears had caught her lover's voice and the last words.

Weak as she was, she sprang up and fairly ran into the next room. "No--Chester--No!" she cried. "I never suspected--not even when I saw the shoe-prints. No--that is the man,--there--I know it--I know it!"

I hurried after her, as she flung herself again between Lockwood and the rest of us, as if to shield him, while Lockwood proudly caressed the stray locks of dark hair that fluttered on his shoulder.

I looked in the direction all were looking.

Before us stood, unmasked at last, the scientific villain who had been plotting and scheming to capture both the secret and Inez--well knowing that suspicion would rest either on Lockwood, the soldier of fortune, or on the jealous Indian woman whose son had been rejected and whose brother he had himself already, secretly, driven to an insane suicide in his unscrupulous search for the treasure of Truxillo.

It was Professor Norton, himself--first thief of the dagger which later he had hidden but which Whitney's detectives had stolen in turn from him; writer of anonymous letters, even to himself to throw others off the trail; maker of stramonium cigarettes with which to confuse the minds of his opponents, Whitney, Mendoza, and the rest; secret lover of Inez whom he demanded as the price of the dagger; and murderer of Don Luis.

Senora de Moche and Alfonso, behind me, could only gasp their astonishment. Much as she would have liked to have the affair end in a general vindication of the curse she could not control a single, triumphant thrust.

"His blood," she cried, transfixing Norton with her stern eyes, "has cried out of Titicaca for vengeance from that day to this!"

"Want any help?"

We all turned toward the door as Burke, dust-covered and tired, stamped in, followed by a man whose face was bandaged and bloody.

"I heard shots. Is it all over?"

But we paid no attention to Burke.

There was Whitney, considerably banged up by the fall, but lucky to be alive.

"I tried to shake him," he explained, catching sight of Norton. "But he stuck to us, even on our detours. Finally he grew desperate--forced my car off the road. What happened after that, I don't know. He must have carried me some miles, insensible, and dumped me in the bushes again. I was several miles up the hill, tramping along, looking for a road-house, when this gentleman found me and said I had gone too far."

Senora de Moche turned from Lockwood and Inez who were standing, oblivious to the rest of us, and stared at Whitney's bruised and battered face.

"It is the curse," she muttered. "It will never--"

"Just a moment," interrupted Craig, drawing the dagger from his pocket, and turning toward Inez. "It was to your ancestor that the original possessor of the secret promised to give the 'big fish,' when he was killed."

He paused and handed the dagger to her. She touched it shuddering, but as though it were a duty.

"Take it," he said simply. "The secret is yours. Only love can destroy the curse on the Gold of the Gods."

THE END