“However, it is enough to say that by watching the mails and sending out messengers we have connected the rival trust company of which you have heard me speak with mysterious correspondents in Peru. The work has been long, but rather satisfying.”
“Why,” Sam declared, “I thought this expedition was a good deal of a guess! I hadn’t any idea you knew so much about this country.”
“We know more about it than is generally believed,” was the answer. “Deposit box A, which was robbed on the night Ralph Hubbard was murdered, contained, as I have said, all the information we possessed regarding this case. When the papers were stolen I felt like giving up the quest, but the code telegrams cheered me up a bit, especially when they were stolen.”
“I don’t see anything cheerful in having the despatches stolen.”
“It placed the information I possessed in the hands of my enemies, of course,” the other went on, “but at the same time it set them to watching the points we had in a way investigated, and which they now understood that we intended to visit.”
“I don’t quite get you!” Sam said.
“You had an illustration of that at the haunted temple,” Mr. Havens continued. “The Redfern group knew that that place was on my list. By some quick movement, understood at this time only by themselves, they sent a man there to corrupt the custodian of the captive animals. You know what took place then. Only for courage and good sense, the machines would have been destroyed.”
“The savages unwittingly helped some!” suggested Sam.
“Yes, everything seemed to work to your advantage,” Mr. Havens continued. “At the mines, now,” he continued, “we helped ourselves out of the trap set for us.”
“You don’t think the miners, too, were working under instructions?” asked Sam. “That seems impossible!”