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.
We waited in silence, the more hopeless as the singing of the night insects italicized our isolation from the organized instruments of man for the righting of wrong. Here we were, each suspecting the other, in the home of a man whom all mistrusted.
"There's no use sitting here doing nothing," exclaimed Lockwood in whose mind was evidently the same thought, "not so long as we have the telephone and the automobiles."
These, at least, were our last bonds with the great world that had wrapped a dark night about a darker mystery.
"There are many miles of wire—many miles of road. Which way shall we turn?"
Senora de Moche seemed to take a fiendish delight in the words as she said them. It was as though she challenged our helplessness in the face of a power that was greater than us all.
Lockwood flashed a look of suspicion in her direction. As for myself, I had never been able to make the woman out. To-night she seemed like a sort of dea ex machina, who sat apart, playing on the passions of a group of puppet men whom she set against each other until all should be involved in a common ruin.
It was impossible, in the silence of this far-off lonely place in the country, not to feel the weirdness of it all.
Once I closed my eyes and was startled by the uncanny vividness of a mind-picture that came unbidden. It was of a scrap of paper on which, in rough capitals was printed: