"And you think that may have something to do with the case?" asked
Kennedy, trying to draw out anything more that she knew.
"I don't know," she answered frankly. "But don't you think that it is strange—an ancestor of mine murdered and now, hundreds of years afterward, my father, the last of his line in direct descent, murdered in the same way, by an Inca dagger that has disappeared?"
"Then you were listening while I was talking to Professor Norton?" shot out Kennedy, not unkindly, but rather as a surprise test to see what she would say.
"You cannot blame me for that," she returned simply.
"Hardly," smiled Kennedy. "And I appreciate your reticence—as well as your coming here finally to tell me. Indeed, it is strange. Surely you must have some other suspicions," he persisted, "something that you feel, even though you do not know?"
Kennedy was leaning forward, looking deeply into her eyes, as if he would read what was passing in her mind. She met his gaze for a moment, then looked away.
"You heard Mr. Lockwood say that he had become associated with a Mr.
Whitney, Mr. Stuart Whitney, down in Wall Street?" she ventured.
Kennedy did not take his eyes from her face as he sought to extract the reluctant words from her.
"Mr. Whitney has been largely interested in Peru, in business and in mining," she went on slowly. "He has given large sums to scholars down there, to Professor Norton's expeditions from New York. I—I'm afraid of that Mr. Whitney!"
Her quiet tone had risen to a pitch of tremulous excitement. Her face, which had been pale from the strain of the tragedy, was now full of colour, and her breast rose and fell with suppressed emotion.