"Sh!" was Kennedy's only comment in the negative.
I glanced now and then at my watch and was surprised to see how early it was. The minutes were surely leaden-footed.
In the darkness and silence I fell to reviewing the weird succession of events which had filled the past two days. I am not by nature superstitious, but in the darkness I could well imagine a staring succession of eyes, beginning with the dilated pupils of Don Luis and always ending with those remarkable piercing black eyes of the Indian woman with the melancholy-visaged son.
Suddenly I heard in the next room what sounded like a series of little explosions, as though someone were treading on match-heads.
"My burglar powder," muttered Craig in a hoarse whisper. "Every step, even those of a mouse running across, sets it off!"
He rose quickly and threw open the door into the Mendoza suite. I sprang through after him.
There, in the shadows, I saw a dark form, starting back in retreat. But it was too late.
In the dim light of the little explosions, I caught a glimpse of a face—the face of the person who had been craftily working on the superstition of Don Luis, now that his influence had got from the government the precious concession, working with the dread drug to drive him insane and thus capture both Mendoza's share of the fortune as well as his daughter, well knowing that suspicion would rest on the jealous Indian woman with the wonderful eyes whose brother had already been driven insane and whose son Inez Mendoza really loved better than himself—the soldier of fortune, Lockwood.