"We are not the only ones who have sought the peje grande," resumed Mendoza eagerly, "but we are the only ones who are seeking it in the right place, and," he added, leaning over with a whisper, "I am the only one who has the concession, the monopoly, from the government to seek in what we know to be the right place. Others have found the little fish. We shall find the big fish."
He had raised his voice from the whisper and I caught the Señorita looking anxiously at Kennedy, as much as to say, "You see? His mind is full of only one subject."
Señor Mendoza's eyes had wandered from us and he seemed all of a sudden to grow wild.
"We shall find it," he cried, "no matter what obstacles man or devil put in our way. It is ours—for a simple piece of engineering—ours! The curse of Mansiche—pouf!"
He snapped his fingers almost defiantly as he said it in a high-pitched voice. There was an air of bravado about it and I could not help feeling that perhaps in his heart he was not so sure of himself as he would have others think. It was as though some diabolical force had taken possession of his brain and he fought it off.
Kennedy quickly followed the staring glance of Mendoza. Out on the broad veranda, by an open window a few yards from us, sat the woman of the wheel chair. The young man who accompanied her had his back toward us for the moment, but she was looking fixedly in our direction, paying no attention apparently to the music. She was a large woman, with dark hair, and contrasting full red lips. Her face, in marked contradiction to her Parisian costume and refined manners, had a slight copper swarthiness about it.
But it was her eyes that arrested and held one's attention. Whether it was in the eyes themselves or in the way that she used them, there could be no mistake about the hypnotic power that their owner wielded. She saw us looking at her, but it made no difference. Not for an instant did she allow our gaze to distract her in the projection of their weird power straight at Don Luis himself.
Don Luis, on his part, seemed fascinated.
He rose, and, for a moment, I thought that he was going over to speak to her, as if drawn by that intangible attraction which Poe has so cleverly expressed in his "Imp of the Perverse." Instead, in the midst of the number which the orchestra was playing, he turned and, as though by a superhuman effort, moved away among the guests out into the brighter lights and gayety of the lobby.
I glanced up in time to see the anxious look on the Señorita's face change momentarily into a flash of hatred toward the woman in the window.