“A mystery?”
“He calls it a mystery,” laughed the other. “You see, when we were living here together he disappeared for three months. We thought he had been killed by a dynamite explosion. Surely, you have heard of it, Senorita?”
“Yes—I think everyone has heard of it. And then, at the time, there were rumors. For instance, I heard—I heard who exploded the dynamite.”
“Sure enough, there were all kinds of rumors. But, of course, the whole thing was an accident, a horrible accident, that nearly cost David his life. He didn’t heed the signal in time—or something went wrong—the signal or the dynamite. Anyway, he wasn’t seen or heard of again for three months. We all thought he must have been blown to bits. Then, a curious thing happened. One morning I found him in my house, in a sort of trance.”
“Well?”
“When he came out of the trance, he declared he could remember nothing of what he had been through. Those three months were a blank in his memory.”
“And then——?”
“He left Bogota, declaring he would never come back. That was just three years ago.”
“But——”
“Yes, now he is coming back—with some friends—to solve this mystery, so he says.”